Infallibility–its not just for Popes anymore.
Judging from the rage from the usual mavens of the Professional Left I guess it is high time that we all admit that they–like the Popes–are infallible. Their ideas, strategies, policies and tactics are always exactly right and to question these pearls of wisdom runs the risk of excommunication from their very, very cool progressive club. And who would want to suffer that fate and lose the ability to work with these clever folks to devise more of their sure fire plans for legislative success through instant and complete progress.
After all, look how well that whole ‘no health care reform without a Public Option’ strategy worked. The momentum of the progressive agenda was slowed down so that we could have that very important fight with Blue Dogs to prove who was the most powerful force in Washington. Sure this pissing match gave the wingnuts breathing room and talking points to organize against the progressive agenda. And yes, Climate change, DOMA, DADT, Immigration Reform and a host of other issues had to be sacrificed so we could have this very useful dick measuring contest with the Blue Dogs, but everybody now knows that HCR sucks because it did not have a Public Option. So all in all, the Professional Left seems to have define it as a successful strategy.
And their wisdom keeps raining down upon us all as the Infallible Professionals of the Left keeps on devising new and even more unrealistic goals to purify the movement of heretics and unbelievers. A whole series of policy ideas with no chance of ever being enacted into law have been presented and must be enacted exactly as imagined or a betrayal must be declared. And when these very clever tactics fail–as they almost always do–it must be somebody else’s fault (usually that Black guy in the White House). And that’s when the real fun of ginning up anger and rage for more fund-raising, ratings and perceived power gets to swing into full gear. Frankly, that seems to be the goal of the entire project as the cavalcade of Infallibility rises up to condemn others while protecting the purity and perfection of their ideas.
And if one dares to mention that they might not be infallible or that they might be wrong–then they will go medieval in their outrage and condemnation. Even the most gentle effort to mention the consistent failure of their strategies and tactic fills them with Holy rage.
In his press conference today, President Obama called these folks out and smashed their myth of infallibility. Good for him. It is about time somebody told these folks that tantrums about the failure of their magical thinking is not really useful. Naturally all the usual folks are filled with all of the usual rage. Nothing can be allowed to stop their tantrums. Nobody can stop the mavens of the Professional Left from trying to turn every policy discussion into another excuse to re-enact the Alamo and/or Picket’s Charge.
But–maybe, just maybe calling out this nonsense will convince others to doubt the wisdom and infallibly of these self-appointed voices of progressives, liberals and Democrats. It is way past time for these folks to own their recent errors of judgement, tactics, strategies and advice. Their ideas were never infallible and frankly quite a few of them were bad ideas. Infallibility never existed for the Popes and it does not exist among those new and old media types who make their living by presenting themselves as anointed spokespeople for the Left.
It is clear that they hate folks pointing out that they are professionals almost as much as they hate calls for them to be accountable for the things they say and do. Sure, they demand that from everybody else, but they also demand a free pass for their infallible selves. Obama called them out on this nonsense today and I expect their levels of outrage to flip into Spanish Inquisition mode at any moment.
And yet, I no longer care who they wish to purge, what their policy ideas are or their calls to action. There are important things to do and real problems to solve. Fortunately there are lots of people, groups and policy makers working to solve them. I think I’ll throw in with these folks. I’ve no more patience for the self-appointed progressive police and their self-indulgent demands to treat all of our politics and problems as a fantasy world of perfect choices.
Cheers
Hunter Gathers
The Yippies never really went away, did they?
NobodySpecial
Ooo, look, revisionist history!
Actually, I’m pretty sure more time was spent by those evil forces of the Professional Left known as Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley pissing away time in committee, but hey, you’ve got hippies to punch, right?
srv
Alan Simpson is so right about Krugman being a total loon.
Loneoak
The best way to spend our energy is joining the Republicans in fighting our common enemy, Obama.
Allan
I want to stand under this post’s bedroom window and hold my boombox aloft to serenade it.
MaximusNYC
So, just so I can follow along at home, “professional left” = anyone who disagrees with Obama? Clue me in.
Dennis G.
@Hunter Gathers:
Nope. They just followed Rubin (Jerry) to Wall Street.
Yutsano
Lefter-than-thou needs to die a long slow torturous death. I just want this country to get over Reaganism and figure out the last 30 years was a total disaster. My only hope is this country has been through worse, and we’ll come out the other side a better nation.
Mike Kay (Team America)
HIPPIE PUNCHING!!!1!
amk
Kill the rich. Starve the poor. The “progressive” way.
Corner Stone
I’ve always wanted to be flexible enough to blow myself.
Thank you for leading the way dengre.
WarMunchkin
So here’s what I don’t get about “Professional Left”. Does that mean people who are liberal for a living, or upper-class liberals?
NobodySpecial
@Loneoak:
FTFY.
Mark S.
Really, all those issues failed because some people on the left wanted a public option.
I’ve read a lot of bullshit the last week on this blog but that wins first prize.
Hunter Gathers
@Dennis G.: I swear they have returned from the netherworld, if only to primary Obama with Pigasus the Immortal.
ulee
Lame, baiting, Cole ass-kissing post.
Mike Kay (Team America)
I love the smell of hippie punching in the morning!
That smell…
That putrid hippie smell being taking out to the trash…..
Smells like victory!!
sniffle… ya know some day the hippies are gonna end….
MaximusNYC
Revising and extending my remarks:
I’m no FireDogLaker. I cheered very loudly for health reform. But this rotten tax deal really pisses me off. I’ve literally been losing sleep lately contemplating the accelerating Democratic collaboration in the destruction of the American middle class.
Apparently that makes me a “professional leftist”, which is apparently a terrible thing.
NobodySpecial
@MaximusNYC: Funny guy. You still think there’s a middle class.
Corner Stone
@Allan: What would the song you’d play be? Something by Boy George?
Mike Kay (Team America)
I wanna ask the firetards a question, and I keep asking, until someone can answer:
why is “hippie punching” wrong, but obama bashing okay? Shouldn’t it be a two-way street?
Corner Stone
@ulee: Not really. This is a pretty typical Dennis G. post.
Oh…wait…
Mike Kay (Team America)
@amk: This
TWP
DADT was sacrificed because liberals wanted a Public Option? Now that’s some *magical thinking*, ya dumbass.
It couldn’t possibly be because, HORRORS, the President & Pussy Senate Dems dropped the ball and kept pushing the difficult choices to the lame duck session….could it??
Talk about re-writing history and not admitting you’re wrong…I think this post takes the cake.
Dennis G.
@MaximusNYC:
Nope. I would say it is anybody who makes their living presenting themselves a spokesperson for the “left”. Some hate Obama all the time others don’t. Some agree with him and other always oppose him. But it is what they are paid for that makes them professionals. It is a simple concept.
My problem is with the way they never own their mistakes and always blame others. Making policy plans where you will always fail because of an insistence on perfection is fine for pundits, but useless for progress. At some point it would be nice if any of these folks ever admitted to making a mistake.
But you remind me that they cannot be criticized unless you want to be called a hippie puncher or an Obot. Their fans have been trained well, but so it goes.
Ross Hershberger
Substitute a few words and this rant could apply to Libertarians. Or other ideological absolutists.
In either case it’s an abstract ideal versus the sausage factory.
NobodySpecial
@Corner Stone: This song, I think, would be proper.
amk
Ezra Klein
MobiusKlein
Total Thread Death predicted.
Can’t we get our heads out of our navels, and stick them back up our butts where they belong?
hhex65
It reminds me of the old Art Bell show audience. It’s not about whether the Red Star Kachina is coming or not. It’s about arguing over whether it is The Purifier of Hopi myth or simply a cloaking shield for an alien craft. Never return to question your premise.
NobodySpecial
Technically, that definition would include Obama. I hope he’s not punching himself.
Allan
@Corner Stone: I was more of a Depeche Mode guy myself.
Ross Hershberger
Thought question: Who among the realistic primary candidates in 2008 would have made the Leftist Theoreticians happy? Kucinich? Probably, but they’d be denouncing him as a sellout by now as well. Hillary? She’d long ago have made today’s speech and told ’em how the cow eats the cabbage.
TWP
@NobodySpecial: Truth.
Steve R.
@Dennis G.:
You said it, not me. But if the shoe fits, etc.
wengler
What Obama signaled today is that the Republicans are going to be able to roll him every single time.
This Professional Left nonsense has got to stop. We just added on a ton of financial liabilities, a big chunk of which is going to people who are thoroughly invested in destroying our economy. When the bill comes due for those, who do you think is going to pay?
NobodySpecial
@Ross Hershberger: Actually, I think most of them fell in with Obama to make sure Clinton didn’t end up running things, since she was a well known ‘conservative’ Dem and Obama was a blank slate to a lot of them.
FlipYrWhig
Why are so many people saying that the “payroll tax holiday” is a terrible blow to Social Security? Who started that? Because the moment I heard the phrase “payroll tax holiday,” I associated it with Robert Reich, who has talked it up as a stimulative idea repeatedly — yes, as part of a mix with other things — but now it’s been declared anathema, apparently. Who issued that particular fatwa? It could be good policy, it could be bad policy, I dunno, I’m not an economist. But people who don’t really know and aren’t really experts don’t all spontaneously start saying the same thing. They get it from somewhere. Where?
Corner Stone
@Allan: Common ground.
Dollared
@AMK.
As a professional leftist, I just want to say that I am thrilled beyond my wildest dreams with that $180Billion in forgone revenue and social programs so that businesses with literally trillions in cash can get additional tax breaks for investing in China.
MobiusKlein
@Mark S.: Blaming the Professional left for the delay of ACA is way off base too. Does anybody remember the townhall pseudo-riots? The Bachus delay zone? That certainly soured the states too.
Corner Stone
@wengler:
Umm,….us?
marydem
ummm…aren’t you the professional left?
as far as i’m concerned, the deal’s off if it touches social security.
rootless_e
@wengler: “signaled” seems to the new meaningless buzz word of the poutosphere.
MaximusNYC
@Dennis G.:
For the record, I didn’t call you or anyone else either of those things. And I as for being a fan of “them”, I’m still hazy on “their” identities — you didn’t give any links or cite any names.
I tend to think generalized invective against unnamed enemies is largely counterproductive.
But I should really get off the intertubes and let my blood pressure subside so I can go to sleep at a halfway respectable hour. This thread is not worth any more agita.
Good night, professional and unprofessional leftists, hippies, hippie punchers, et al. I leave you this, for your contemplation and edification:
http://xkcd.com/386/
Dennis G.
@MaximusNYC:
No it doesn’t make you the professional left unless you happen to make your living off of selling your opinions, policy ideas and political strategies and tactics. If that is how you earn your keep then the PL label would fit.
More likely your just another person pissed off about the state of our failing political system. Join the club.
I think there is plenty of blame to go around, but somehow we can never talk about the “Professional Left” and their role in any of those failures. I guess that is the third rail of the progressive blog-o-sphere.
I’ll check back in with this outrage fest later.
Happy to help give folks something to talk about.
Cheers
srv
Like cutting SS revenue by $120B a year and how to blame that on the hippies.
And we’re the loony ones…
BR
Dennis – I have to say, I think there was a third option on HCR that neither firebaggers nor the WH were considering, but I think it could have worked quite well.
Kennedy, in 2006 and 2007, proposed a Medicare-based public option bill that was maybe 4 pages long, and very cleanly crafted. It was the sort of thing that I think would have been a death knell to the insurance industry. The bill was short enough that it wouldn’t have been easy to lie about, and wouldn’t have required much debate, so it could have passed with some momentum. I would have rather had that bill than the bill we got.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@amk: I figured this out not to long ago: why there’s not a dimes worth of difference btwn the teabaggers and the firebaggers.
the teabaggers generally have no analytical skills. The firebaggers do have analytical skills, but on many issues their emotion completely overwhelms their ability to weight propositions and outcomes rationally. What are both sides left with — emotion (mostly anger and hate). In the end, on too many issues, emotion governs both of their outlooks and behavior.
An analytical post by Ezra racking up the score might as well be in a extraterrestrial language, because emotion won’t permit them to weight evidence.
NobodySpecial
@FlipYrWhig: I think they see it simply as defunding Social Security, since…well, that’s where Social Security gets it’s money. Of course, it would have been better to just remove the cap on the damned thing, since it’s a hugely regressive tax. However, taxing the rich is next to sanctimony or something, so that won’t happen.
FlipYrWhig
@NobodySpecial: The DKos crowd savaged the Hillary Clinton people for months and drove some of them to mental states typically seen on Shutter Island. Now they’re doing the same thing to Obama people. Either every politician always sucks and is a disappointing and irredeemable failure, or DKos tends to have a readership that decides so.
BombIranForChrist
Are you high?
There are a lot of fact based reasons to criticize the Infallible Left, as you infallibly lump them into a Group That Is Not You, but they did not doom climate change et al. I can only assume that you are so blinded by the hypocrisy of your self-righteous and emotional grandstanding that you can’t see this.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@FlipYrWhig: Mitch McConnell?
mnpundit
When is the last time the DFHs were wrong. About ANYTHING?
rootless_e
One key statistic is that of the 95 congressional candidates who pledged to support net neutrality, the powerful netroots electoral machine delivered ZERO wins.
Why Obama does not want to tie the millstone of this group around his neck and dive into the cesspool with them is a mystery for the ages.
Dennis SGMM
This is too easy for an oldtimer. Obama can’t run on easing unemployment or anything like an economic recovery outside of Wall Street in ’12. So instead he’ll run against the Republican House. His only lament is that the Democrats didn’t lose the Senate as well.
NobodySpecial
@Dennis G.:
Well, I mean, the “Professional Left” is widely touted among these parts as being a tiny minority of a minority, and therefore has no power to influence legislation or win elections. So people complain about how much they screwed up everything when it goes off the rails, of course.
Aaaaand another front pager leaves the field. Is ABL’s thing contagious today?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@BR: This is naive. A public option will never pass without a counterweight to the massive lobbying power of the insurance industry. Jesus could come back and by definition write the perfect bill, but senators will never bite the hand that feeds them, unless there is an equal or greater hand to replace a prime benefactor.
Gian
just saw the interview with Senator Brown from Ohio on Maddow.
Basically he says, if Obama had cared to fight, and travel to states with GOP Senators, with high unemployment, based on the recent past with the exact same issue they’d have had 6-8 GOP defections between Christmas and New Years on the issue, without giving up the extra tax cut for the super rich, or the “payroll tax holiday” which really opens the door to messing around with the signature New Deal program targeted to make seniors not eat cat food.
given that obama personally wanted/commissioned the “catfood commission” I’m not at all shocked that people who care about seniors not eating cat food are rather alarmed by the capitulation.
By any measurement of the dollar value of the “compromise” Obama gave up at least 20 times what he got.
When his own allies in congress wanted to fight because they think they could do a whole lot better.
and the whole press conference which seemed to say, to “I’ll fight next time”
For the Democratic party his renomination bid is boiling down to switching horses in mid stream. And yeah, I sent him omoney in ’08
Rathskeller
I’m not happy about the overall result, but I am very happy that they got the unemployment back in, and for a solid 13 months. it is humane, and it is stimulative.
I truly wish that things were different, but I am very frustrated with the intense liberal anger at Obama for situations that the GOP solely created, in part by their lock-step, Borg-like approach to politics. in 1990, George H. W. Bush was forced to raised taxes by the Dem majority. He didn’t want to, and he didn’t have a choice. Violating a well-known campaign promise and going against the anti-tax mantra on the right actually wrecked his reelection — he still didn’t have a choice. That’s the curse of being president.
It’s stupid. People somehow think we elect kings. Reagan didn’t get everything he wanted. Fucking George W. Bush didn’t get everything he wanted, and he had the most favorable set up of any president in a hundred years. Be realistic.
Adam
I’m calling bullshit on this post.
The problem with Obama isn’t that he is insufficiently leftist it’s that he’s not even very pragmatic.
Pragmatism states that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily.
Tax cuts have a multiplier effect on GDP of 0.3.
In what universe is that satisfactory?
Tax cuts are not a pragmatic solution and should be rejected and spoken out against by Obama.
The least he could do is get out there and say something along the lines of ‘I’ve settled on a deal with the Republicans. There’s a lot of good stuff in there like: List off the good stuff. However the Republicans won’t allow a majority vote in congress unless millionaires and billionaires get their milkshake.’
NobodySpecial
@FlipYrWhig: Wes Clark was an early favorite at DKos, but when he jumped out most of them headed straight to Obama. It’s quite understandable as a reaction to the Bill Clinton years of ‘tack right, and maybe the country will love us again’ nonsense that ended up with him impeached. The big takeaway that I got from the Clinton years is that if you give Republicans a hand, they will take off your arm at the shoulder and attempt to remove your head with it.
Really, why most people don’t see how an impressionable young person during Clinton’s turn might become a lefty who doesn’t want to make deals with the GOP is incomprehensible.
Lev
@MaximusNYC: Your argument is illogical. Extending the upper-income tax cuts for two years will not lead to the destruction of the middle class.
What bothers me about the professional left is the abstraction. It occurs to me that there were plenty of “progressives” who would have been happy to see no health care reform unless a public option was in there, just as it occurs to me that a lot of these folks would be happy with letting all the Bush tax cuts expire instead of extending them all. Letting them expire would simply be a disaster to families trying their hardest to make ends meet. Since those are the choices we have, thanks to Blue Dog idiocy earlier in the year, I always choose the one that leaves fewer people suffering, not the one that’s most cathartic.
Dollared
And Dennis, WTF?
All most of us are asking is that Obama at least mention that Reagan was a liar and that his ideas should not rule our world.
Instead, we get this insane triangulation that allows the SCLM to believe that they are right to believe that more wars lead to more freedom, that tax cuts raise revenue, That $250,000 =middle class, that Social Security needs to be cut, that insurance companies deserve guaranteed profits of 15-20%, etc, etc, etc. Did he forget to go to Philadelphia and acknowledge the primacy of states’ rights? Give him time. You know, that Jefferson Davis had some good ideas.
For me, the policy outcomes are in the right direction, but inadequate because of how fucked up our economic model it. The middle class is dying and Obama wants to give it health care for only $25,000/year – that will be my cost next year, for four perfectly healthy humans. What company will hire an American worker at that cost? He promised Change, Dennis – not “more of the same with a bit less outrageous corporate behavior.”
But what really outrages me is Obama’s refusal to advocate for true liberal ideals – equality of opportunity, a solid social safety net, rational decisionmaking based on facts, and acknowledgement that the interests of multinational corporations do not necessarily align with that of American families. Somebody has to call out the lying, corrupt, stinking Republicans, and he has the bullhorn. And he’s sitting on it, hoping that he can get to 8% unemployment again so he can possibly get re-elected and face a Republican Senate.
So don’t act all fucking superior to the Left, Dennis. Either you agree with those ideals or you don’t. If you do, then you should want this fight. If you don’t, then you are too fucking comfortable to be on my team.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Dennis SGMM: Being the last Democrat standing in the room sure didn’t hurt Bill Clinton in ’96.
Dennis SGMM
@NobodySpecial:
I’ve just been amazed that “the left” and/or liberals have become the enemy of the Democratic party. For my part, that says more about today’s Democratic party then it does about the left or about liberals.
All hail Richard Nixon!
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Gian: if the senate wants to fight, they’re welcomed to invoke the filibuster.
Hell, they could blow up the filibuster and pass a measure right now on a majority vote.
It’s that easy.
But they won’t because it is they who don’t want to fight. It is they who won’t eliminate their precious filibuster.
frosty
@Dennis G.: Except for Abbie Hoffman who stayed reasonably true to his ideals, went underground as Barry Freed, and championed the St. Lawrence through “Save the River.”
Agreed Rubin was a strange hack, sellout bird.
Ija
This thread is going to be epic. I predict 1000+ comments, the majority from WyldPirate, getting it on with several different people at once.
Dr. Squid
@Dennis G.:
See, if you have to own your mistakes and not blame others, you’d have to actually do something. Which brings up the question: what useful thing has Cenk Uygur ever done?
wengler
@Ross Hershberger
It goes back to the old question doesn’t it? Would you have rather seen McGovern beat Dick Nixon in ’72? If you can’t answer that right away then I think you are nuts.
Speaking of Nixon, I think a major way that the ruling elite keeps control in this country is by exporting violence. Countries are taken over, entire peoples are at the whims of American neoconservative ideology, and at home the people are given to delusions that a goat farmer in Afghanistan that doesn’t even know that an outside world exists threatens them directly. Obama’s policies concerning US troops defending transnational corporations’ interests appears to be identical to his predecessor’s. This of course isn’t to impugn his entire foreign policy approach, just to say the part that directly kills lots of people is humming along brillantly.
Dennis Kucinich of course wouldn’t have followed the same policies, and the American public is generally taught by their leaders that a President is required to kill large amounts of foreigners to keep the country prosperous. And when the country is not prosperous, the President needs to kill many, many more. Thus making Kucinich a laughably awful candidate.
mnpundit
@Rathskeller: Did it though? I’ve heard people say that the unemployment extension extended the 99 weeks results. That is, people who apply will be eligible for 99 weeks for a year. HOWEVER that those people who have already drawn 99 weeks are SOL. It doesn’t great 99 weeks+.
So people will still be running out of money every day in the future but new jobless will get the 99.
I am trying to find out if this is true. Another is why the tax cuts debate was pushed to 2012. That is horrible, do you think that will go well in an election year? That would mean Obama would have to take a stand on something, and he’s not yet done that on any issue that he isn’t aligned with the republicans.
Christin
@FlipYrWhig:
Uhhh…the DKos crowd is a group of wannabe faux I’m so angreeeee errrr!!!! faux anarchists. Bunch of extremeists who NEVER seem to log off their computers to work, eat, pee, or realize “oops. i ain’t got no family friends or terlet paper”. It is so Hilarious to see Moulitsas begging for money, sign my petition. listen to me hear me roar! and getting nowhere on all three. I do not know why find that funny but I do.
Jesus Stinking Christ it’s the same 150 names on there for six years who start posting at 3 a.m and stop posting at 2:45 in the a.m. the next day. I’d be sad for them but they are so bizarre I can’t dredge up the sympathy anymore.
Just like my mama said, go far enough to the right, go far enough to the left, looky here! Full circle chilluns.
WyldPirate
Dennis G. sez…
No. Apparently in your eyes it is reserved solely for a specific President who can’t possibly be responsible for anything.
Ija
This thread is going to be epic. I predict 1000+ comments, the majority from WyldPirate, arguing with several different people at once.
Honestly, I’m not very fond of the term “professional left”. It’s too loaded a term now, no one would ever hear your arguments when you use it.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Gian:
Thanks, Sherrod. Way to thank all of us who voted for you by losing your fucking mind two years before your re-election bid. Seriously? 6-8 GOP defections? When in the past two years have we had half as many defections on any major legislature? Or any legislature for that matter?
What the fuck happened to the reality-based community?
Dollared
And the LEFT organized the Tea Party Summer? What?Dennis. Remember Max Baucus?
For a historian I admire, you sure can’t remember last year very clearly.
Christin
@Dennis SGMM:
oh please. Do NOT insult the Liberals of the party. They are normal and sane. This is about the far left crazy extrememist A.N.S.W.E.R moranic Naderites who now refuse to be called LIberals. No. They are to fucking pure for that shit. They are PROGRESSIVE. Hear me crap.
I’ve just been amazed that “the left” and/or liberals have become the enemy of the Democratic party. For my part, that says more about today’s Democratic party then it does about the left or about liberals.
ulee
Cheers. Its a pretentious screw you way of saying I am a dick and proud of it. Not cool with us earthy progressive leftists.
amk
@Dr. Squid:
Well. He got kossacks riled up into making hussy fits a la john fucking mccain. That’s got to count for something.
NobodySpecial
@Ija: That’s because Dengre isn’t arguing anything, he’s just venting. It’s a lefty dog whistle, and should be treated with the according seriousness.
On that note.
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3738
rootless_e
The question however is whether we will let the Vanguard Professional Leftists define politics to be no more than bitter purity bitching and whining and let them drive everyone who is not part of the program into apathy or whether we will defend some areas where people interested in postive political action can discuss.
This question was raised before in the late 1960s and the vanguardistas won.
Buggy Ding Dong
Clap louder you ungrateful liberal fucks. And don’t forget to send us your fucking money, man those phone banks and knock on the god-damned doors you greasy hippies.
srv
@Adam:
Welcome to the world of lowered expectations.
Me, I’m buying a catfood company in Mexico and relabeling as fine cuisine for the old folks’ homes. Can anyone tell me who is going to have oversight over the FDA in the House? I’ve got some checks to write.
jaywillie
@MobiusKlein: I remember those.
Do you remember how the lefty ideologues organized and effectively countered the public demonstrations of the Teabaggers?
Yeah, neither do I. I suppose that’s because it’s easier to feverishly type some hyperbolic invectives toward the President for not producing unicorns out of his arse fast enough than it is to actually do something productive.
And y’all need to drop the “hippie punching” meme. You’re not hippies. If you were hippies, you wouldn’t care f*** all about politics. If anything, you’re the descendants of yippies, whom the hippies couldn’t stand because of their incessant prattling and excessive need to make a show of themselves. There’s a famous story about Ken Kesey showing up at a Vietnam War protest rally. When he got to the microphone, he said, “You know what you do about the Vietnam War? Fuck it.” He promptly turned around and walked away, after which most of the crowd that had gathered did the same thing. There’s another story where Pete Townsend accosted Abbie Hoffman with his guitar when Hoffman attempted to takeover the microphone so he could launch into some political rant.
Christin
yikes. that should have been in quotes.
god I HATE THE COMMENTING system.
wengler
@Corner Stone
It appears the lower 98 percent of the country will get the lash. So that big pile of money in the Social Security Trust Fund is looking mighty tempting. Remember the rich only pay taxes for SS on the first 106,800 dollars they make, so I assume future “austerity adjustments” will just take from that pile.
Mike M
Yeah, I think it’s a bit late in the day for progressives to get all whipped up about Obama’s compromise. There are only two weeks left in the lame duck session, and nothing is going to get done if the Democrats decide to take all their marbles and head home in a huff. Sure, the Republicans are terrorists holding the middle-class hostage, but refusing to negotiate is not going to stop the hostages from getting their heads blown off.
The time for progressive action in Congress was before the election, but the Democrats blew the opportunity on taxes and now it is too late. If they want to, the Republicans in the Senate can simply run out the clock. There sure won’t be much hope for progressive legislation next year.
Obama might not be enough of a fighter, but at least he is focused on getting something accomplished for the poor and middle classes. Yjere are millions of people out there who need UI benefits to keep food on the table. If Reid can deliver sufficient votes for a better plan, more power to him, but so far no one has proposed anything else that has a chance of getting past.
FlipYrWhig
@Gian:
Are we talking about unemployment, or are we talking about taxes? Because I can sort of imagine Republicans representing high-unemployment states caving on continuation of unemployment insurance. I still can’t really imagine why Republicans would cave on tax cuts for the rich, when they could simply let everyone’s taxes go up and point the finger at Democrats for making it happen.
Does Brown have a theory about how to get the Democrats who didn’t vote for the income-under$250K tax cuts to vote for them? Because they’ve had the opportunity _twice_, and once they begged not to have to vote, and the second time they voted no.
Brown’s idea sounds like at best it would result in a continuation of UI for some amount of time, and an end to all tax cuts, with Democrats getting credit for the former and blame for the latter.
mnpundit
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: So a president putting the squeeze on members of another party in their home districts is somehow bizarre and off limits? What universe are you FROM?
wengler
@rootless_e
You signaled to me that you are a word nazi.
eemom
don’t you people ever sleep?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
it never existed. The blogosphere has always been far more about emotion than logic. To wit: the constant pie fights, hysterical sign-offs, and meta fights, dating back to it’s inception.
NobodySpecial
@Mike M: So here’s a question, if everything you say is exactly true.
What does Obama have to give away to placate a Republican House and make them vote for UI 13 months from now when it runs out, if he has to give up the estate tax and the Bush tax cuts now? What will he be able to give up?
NobodySpecial
@eemom: Got a new video card to install! Who needs sleep?
Comrade Luke
2000: Bush tax cuts go into effect, with a sunset provision set for 2010.
The Left: Nice trick. They’re just going to make them permanent in 2010.
Seven(ish) years pass…
2007(ish): Barack Obama campaigns on ending the Bush tax cuts, among other things like ending DADT, health care reform, etc.
The Left: Awesome!
2008: Barack Obama elected President.
A year and a half passes.
2010: Approaching the midterms, some Democrats lobby to move the tax cut vote out past the midterms because they’re afraid of running on raising tax cuts on the rich.
The Left: What?! That makes no sense! The public is behind ending the tax cuts. Plus, it’s looking pretty bleak that you’ll retain a majority in both houses, which will make it even harder to get that this issue resolved in a lame duck session.
Barack Obama: crickets…
December 2010: Barack Obama attempts to raise tax cuts on the rich.
Republicans: No. We want tax cuts for everyone.
Barack Obama: OK
The Left: WHAT?!
Republicans: And we’re not extending unemployment benefits either.
Barack Obama: OK. How about if we…
The Left: Woa, woa, woa. Extending unemployment benefits have nothing to do with…
Barack Obama: …how about if we extend unemployment benefits thirteen months, add a payroll tax holiday, raise the estate tax cap and talk about this all again in two years.
Republicans: Pfftthahaha. OK!
The Left: WHAT. THE. FUCK. We elected you in part because you were going to eliminate the tax cuts on the rich, and you’ve postponed that until next election? You’ll be running on the same thing you ran on four years ago and reneged on, against a Republican party that will be countering that if you get elected you’ll raise taxes on everyone.
Obama: Stop complaining you sanctimonious purists!!!
The Left: YEA!!! Wait, WHAT?! You’re talking to us?
Balloon Juice: The Professional Left thinks it’s infallible, and it’s cost them Climate Change, DADT, DOMA immigration reform and everything else because they wanted the public option.
Balloon Juice Commentariat: Yeahaw!
Yea, I can see how this is the fault of the Professional Left.
And btw, it doesn’t matter if Obama is the one that proposed the payroll tax and estate tax, or the Republicans did and he accepted the proposal. He’s wrong just the same.
He’s the perfect president for the Republican party. They get to demonize him 24/7, at the end of the day they get what they want anyway, and then Obama blames…the left.
Odie Hugh Manatee
This is going to leave a big mark…lol!
@Corner Stone: “I’ve always wanted to be flexible enough to blow myself.”
I have no problem believing this is the absolute truth. The reason I know you haven’t succeeded yet is because you are here.
No wonder you are so frustrated.
Christin
@Comrade Luke:
InsertBigFuckingYawnhere.
WTF was that 20 foot long post about?
Suffern ACE
@MobiusKlein: Yes, but the professional left has forgotten those things too. It’s all some shit sandwich that Obama cooked up due to his inability as president to get a bunch of Senators to actually do some Senating.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@mnpundit: What squeeze? The home districts laugh at the silly black man, pull the lever for R like they always do, and their reps go and vote down anything with a D attached to it. Same as it ever was.
Martin
I have a theory I suspect will prove unpopular.
We rail against the right as being fully captured by their 27%ers. The blogs and AM radio and Fox are all 27%ers. They always vote Republican. They always turn out. They cannot be convinced to vote Democratic. And they will rail against absolutely anything that the Democratic party. Because this is an unmoving block, they’re a constant in the the algebraic equation of politics. Take a derivative – how politics changes, and they vanish completely.
What the left often forgets, is the left has the same 27%. Call me a hippie puncher, but they express the same characteristics. This is Kos and FDL and other blogs (and this one to some degree) and Olbermann, etc. For all their complaints about Obama or Nelson, etc. and calling for a primary, there’s no fucking way that any of them are going to vote Republican. Again, this is an unmoving block, another constant in the equation.
These are the ideologues. They’re useful, because they’re the keepers of the party direction, like a compass. They tell you which way north is. But they can’t tell the difference between something a foot away and something a mile away. Walk a foot, and there’s still something another foot north. Walk another foot, and there’s still another foot north. They want you to go north, but you can never reach north. When have you gone north enough? Who fucking knows. So their usefulness is limited. And because they’re a constant, once you know where north is, you can pretty much ignore what they’re jabbering about after that (and you should).
That 46% in the middle, not part of either groups 27%ers, don’t really have a clear direction. Some north, some south, some are going in circles. But they’re the ones that remain after that first derivative is taken. They’re the ones that move. They make or break elections. Knowing where they are is key. Knowing where they are heading is pretty much all that matters this far out. These are the ones that tell you how far to go. They don’t know whether to go north or south because they just aren’t that wired for politics to know, but they know if things need to change or not, and a lot or a little. If things are bad they want change. If things are good they want them to stay the same. Once you have a course set, listen to this crowd. But they don’t have media outlets. They don’t really have many people speaking for them because they don’t tune in – there’s no media market here.
So, don’t listen to *any* of the usual suspects. None of them are telling you anything useful – left or right. Figure out how to focus on the people not tuning in. They’re the ones that are going to matter in the end. They’re the ones that will elect or not elect Obama.
Joe Buck
I guess this makes sense. Cole was originally a Republican, until the official party went crazy. Now that Obama occupies the space that Republicans used to, it makes sense for him and his minions to defend Obama from what remains of the Democrats.
Too bad about Social Security. If the deal goes through, it’s the beginning of the end for it. 1/6 of its incoming revenue gone (not counting the shortfall caused by fewer people working) will help grease the skids for the Catfood Commission. In 30 years, it will pay a pittance to 70+ impoverished seniors who can prove that they are destitute.
Dennis SGMM
@Christin:
Thank you for that. I’m an old, long-haired liberal and I’ve been a liberal since the mid-Sixties. I’ve made more GOTV phone calls and knocked on more doors than most of the people on this forum so I get a bit tetchy when a dwindling minority of the party is blamed for the failures of the rest of it.
Tim
Now Angry Black Lady has hijacked Dennis G’s account as well as John’s. WTF?
Funny: DG, or ABL, never mentions exactly WHO this “professional left” is, which makes his or her argument such as it is a lot easier to make.
Stupid Obot post.
Comrade Luke
@Christin:
Just calling you and the rest of you Obots a bunch of fucking hacks.
Short enough for you?
WyldPirate
@Dennis SGMM:
No shit. Particularly since Obama appears to be several notches to the right of Nixon now policy wise.
Christin
Piece of Andrew Sullivan’s analysis on from his blog.
Go there to read the whole thing.
I remember being so pissed off at him back in 2001.
I sent him some emails. He answered my crazy ass far left rant.
I was far far far to the left then.
I sounded like a fucking moron.
He answered me with respect and intelligence.
Never ever forgot that.
His site has kept me sane the past two years.
Between BJ and AS, I’m good.
Fascinating is an understatement. The far left has officially imploded. Morans Unite!
the farmer
@Ija #73
I prefer “Manson Family” – it’s got that whole “dirty hippy” Firebaggy Spawn Ranch thing going for it and who wouldn’t want to punch a dirty Manson Family hippy spawn if they had the chance?
*
Mike Kay (Team America)
So who does the Professional Left™ get to run against Obama? Lamont, Halter? Edwards? KThug?
better start soon, the New Hampshire primary is only 13 months away.
FlipYrWhig
@Christin: Someone on a former thread posted about a list of DKos-backed candidate victories. I think they’ve had a few, and I was proud to be part of the Webb surprise in VA in 2006. Tester, I have no problem with. Good model: populist, a bit libertarian, not pushing the envelope in their states. Well played. Donna Edwards over Al Wynn. Nice!
I also remember Brad Carson, Stephanie Herseth, and Ben Chandler, all of whom are much more conservative than the typical DKos reader. I also remember Markos openly pushing for Charlie Crist to switch to the Democratic party so that Democrats could win in FL, notwithstanding Meek, the actual Democratic candidate. If Rahm Emanuel had done that it would _never_ be forgiven, engraved on brass tablets as the height of self-interested, unprincipled, political skulduggery.
And that’s not to mention Paul Hackett, grassroots candidate whose being pushed aside by Sherrod Brown was once the biggest outrage EVARR! Whatever happened to that guy?
wengler
I think we really have to get one thing straight. Republicans are sociopaths.
The fact that they used unemployment insurance as a bargaining chip in the middle of a damn cold December tells you everything. It used to be uncontroversial to extend unemployment benefits in economic times 100 times better than this.
The Republicans are literally the embodiment of everything wrong with this country. And they will destroy Obama before long no matter what he does.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@the farmer: Alternatively, they could go with the Weathermen or the SLA
Comrade Luke
@Martin:
What do you call people who mostly use their Dem vote as a vote against Republicans? They’re not necessarily ideologues, since they’re more voting against one party than another.
Do you dump them in with the 27%ers on the left since they’re a guaranteed Dem vote? I have no idea where to put them, and I think a lot of people here (myself included) are in that group.
ETA: the thing that really gets me going isn’t that I’m a 27%er, I’m not. But if I disagree with Obama about something all of a sudden I’m part of the Professional Left or some other ridiculous thing.
The guy is not infallible. (Not implying you’re saying that. I guess I’m just venting)
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Tim: Awww, the BJ frontpagers refuse to join along on your asshole crusade? Too bad.
Stupid Naderite post.
WarMunchkin
I think the third rail of American politics is any tax increase, quite frankly.
eemom
@rootless_e:
Sir/Madam — I have always respected your comments on this and other blogs and don’t recall that I ever disagreed with you, nor do I now.
But I have been drifting about like a homeless waif today. I am very upset with Obama’s cave on the tax cuts; I am agreeing with people I never agree with and disagreeing with others I respect.
I’m still convinced that overall Obama has done an amazing job in these last two years, will forever respect him for HCR and other achievements, still support him, and still despise those who sling shit at him from both directions.
But I am REALLY pissed off at him about the tax cuts.
Where is my political home…..?
Christin
@Comrade Luke:
what happened Oh Progressive Purity Weenee? DailyKos getting to screechy even for you?
LOLz. Yes. I’m such a bad bad bot.
Suffern ACE
@Gian: So can I have the names of the 6-8 GOP Senators who want to spend their Christmas’ with Obama?
srv
@Comrade Luke:
I guess they win either way in 2012.
wengler
@Comrade Luke
Keep that rundown of the tax issue so you can re-post it a couple years from now.
Vixen Strangely
I’m part of the not-especially professional and actually quite amatuerish at times left. I’ve decided I am–content.
Is content a synonym for happy or satisfied?–no. What it means is I do not want what I haven’t got. The tax cut for the rich and the unemployment benefits for the jobless are both about folks that aren’t me–and even though I feel the agency of the people who aren’t employed more than I feel the desire to hold onto to more of their own money of the rich, having been broke and underemployed, and not ever having been rich and a pig, I guess I will take what I can get, policy-wise.
I still can say I want more, and feel appropriately Dirty when called a DFH., without any of the guilt of not getting more, because screw the GOP–I supported the protection of mine. It’s a compromise, sure. But I don’t want to lose basic rights for anyone on principle.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@FlipYrWhig:
Great example. Great example!
If you remember Brown hired Marcos’ business partner Jerome Armstrong to run his web campaign, which in turn “influenced” Kos to stab the netroots candidate in the back (Hackett) and throw his blog’s support behind Brown. C.R.E.A.M > liberal ideals.
Sandmann
@wengler:
The only way that can happen is with an assist from the Left.
Professor X
I Tell you where was the Senate
President Obama Told congress to vote on the tax cuts before the mid terms months ago.
But what does Sen Harry Reid do and the others, they postpone it. Congress is a pain in the ass and their blaming President Obama for their lack of their doing what they should have done?
WTH! Congress out to be slapped silly. And by the way, it seams to me that the far left is willing to hold the unemployed hostage as well. What happened to compassion, oh yea they got jobs.
Buggy Ding Dong
Anyone who believes that 46 percent in the middle don’t “belong” to either party is on drugs.
Go look at what John McCain got in 2008. That is your base Republican vote. Period.
Independents are generally just Republicans who don’t vote in the primary. They wank on and on about not voting for a party yet then vote that party 95 percent of the time, but voted for Perot in 1992 or Clinton in 1996 or some fucking Democrat for mayor that knocked on their door.
Every presidential election basically starts out 40-40 and the trick is to get just enough of that 20 percent without losing any of your 40.
The only infalliable Democrat I hear about is Obama from those telling everyone that they just don’t get how awesome he is and if it weren’t for the hippies we would be at 4 percent unemployment and we’d have a gay Brigadier General.
I’ll tell you who was awesome at this sort of “deal”: Southern Democrats, particularly Texas Democrats. They did such a great job of passing a lot of Republican shit and a little Democratic shit that people started giving Republicans credit even for the Democratic shit.
Enjoy your hippie punching party. I’ll just keep working on beating up Republicans.
Christin
@Dennis SGMM:
Apologies Dennis. But I still have grown to despise the far left and no longer even call myself a Progressive I find them so vile and repulsive. you excluded of course.
I never found anyone on DK who screeched I”M A PROGRESSIVE” to actually give a shit about anything or anyone other than your own sorry asses anyway. And a whole disgusting lot of them would crow about not giving a shit about factory farming or the the slaughter of innocents so they are assholes of the highest order IMO.
freelancer
@Dennis G.:
An OT with “Boobs: Discuss.” would have been better for my blood pressure.
wengler
@Sandmann
Explain. I haven’t seen anything to make me believe that the “Left” has any power.
WyldPirate
@Christin:
The fucking truth about the Obama Presidency you delusional simpleton.
Comrade Luke
@Sandmann:
So are you saying that the only way Obama doesn’t get taken down is if the left supports him no matter what?
I thought party purity was bad, based on how we all talk about the Republicans.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Buggy Ding Dong:
Because all the votes for a noted war veteran, superficial moderate, and relatively popular pol came from the Republican base. Gotcha.
Christin
@eemom:
i’m lost too so I hearz you. but you simply put in all on a scale and see where you wind up.
I rescue animals no one wants. this crazy ass progressive nut job over at DK also rescued animals. we hated each other before that. we grew to respect each other and liked that part of each other. Okay. I loved that about him. but i still hated everything else he believed in. and he felt the same about me. and we moved on dot org.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@NobodySpecial:
.
.
The best way to spend our energy is joining President Obama and his Republicans posse in fighting our common enemy, the liberals.
FTFY
.
.
FlipYrWhig
@Comrade Luke:
Here’s a NYT article describing the actual timeline: Tax Cut Timing Proves Elusive for Democrats, 8 November 2010.
They have strategizing on the tax-cut issue beginning in earnest in November 2009. They don’t whitewash it for anyone involved. But it’s ridiculous to have “the left” saying that “some Democrats” are being stupid and Obama saying nothing about it.
A key section from that article:
The Senate screwed the pooch. As usual. After assuring Obama that everything was under control. Just like HCR.
sparky
interesting. i did not know until this post that the perfect is the enemy of the good is actually the US constitution, not to mention pretty much every social science, including every aspect of political philosophy. guess we can throw away those pesky papers, which will also free us to write a new history free from tedious facts. this posting is a useful example of the genre.
oh and one other little note to put between the pom-poms. here’s what Krugman actually said on his blog today:
so very glad that the words above actually mean “great success”! or was it “ringing endorsement”? oh, right, it doesn’t matter, because if this were a better deal, that would be bad, as it would also be the enemy of the good. whew!
Mike Kay (Team America)
aaaa
Christin
@WyldPirate:
No. I’m not a delusional simpleton you moran.
I’m a kool aid drinking Bot.
Christ write it on a sticky and paste it on your 24 hour outrage meter so you remember.
the farmer
@eemom #114
Firebag Spawn Ranch – Kill the Piggies! Acid is groovy.
*
Dennis SGMM
@Sandmann:
Maybe the hit the streets, impassioned, activist left. No, wait: we’re in a new era. The idea now is to not do what’s right, it’s to make excuses. That will surely win people to our side.
amk
@Buggy Ding Dong:
If only the “hippies” had been doing that, they wouldn’t be getting punched now.
WyldPirate
@eemom:
The HCR is trade bait for his next capitulation.
Pay more attention. You seem as if you may electrical activity firing between your eye stalk and the other half-dozen neurons that make up your brain if this tax cut capitulation stimulated your eye stalk/brain.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@sparky: why should anyone care what Krugman has to say?
PanAmerican
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Mary Landrieu has seen the LIGHT!
Comrade Luke
@WyldPirate:
I’m definitely upset with Obama on this, but I’m also thoroughly pissed off at the chickenshit Democrats in Congress who postponed the vote.
It’s pretty obvious that even though one of Obama’s great successes during the campaign was kicking the assess of the Mark Penn’s of the world, the unfortunate fact is that Penn is one of literally hundreds of similar leeches throughout the halls of Congress.
They’re not gone, they’ve just relocated. I don’t know why the lefty pundits don’t focus on that more.
Ija
Maybe we could actually get somewhere if someone would define who exactly is the Professional Left. And I don’t mean define in the general sense (PL is people who do this, this and this), but in the sense of naming names. I’m assuming we’re talking about Daily Kos, FDL crowd here? Anyone else? Rachel Maddow? Keith Olbermann? Do you have to get paid money to be the Professional Left? What about those bloggers who are paid by newspapers, magazines or think tanks to blog? Are Kevin Drum, Jonathan Chait, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Jonathan Cohn, Ta Nehisi Coates etc the Professional Left?
Ija
It seems like people are using the term to just mean “people who disagree with me”.
FlipYrWhig
@Dennis SGMM:
Have you seen one of those? It’s been reported missing. We’ve had a few witnesses that say they saw some guys who yammer on the internet, but no confirmed sightings of the hit-the-streets left in years.
Dennis SGMM
@Christin:
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I try to balance my inclinations to be a bomb-throwing liberal with a dose of pragmatism.
eemom
@WyldPirate:
Allow me to clarify. My remarks were addressed to rootless and other sane denizens of the blog, not you. Apologize for any inconvenience.
Comrade Luke
@FlipYrWhig:
I swear I hadn’t read this comment before I posted on the consultants above. Still, it just reinforces the fact; they’re almost always on the wrong side of issues.
I know that Patty Murray was one of the leaders…as a Washingtonian I’m embarrassed. But wtf was I going to do – vote for Dino Fucking Rossi?
Christin
@FlipYrWhig:
Webb and Tester….how DKos pushed them. And now they are miserable ararchists hating Webb and Tester more than they hate themselves. It’s quite amusing really.
So Kos rails about all this More PROGS NOW or else you’ll see! And yes, then pushed for Christ. And his anlaysis and predictions on that race were even more fucked up than him going Gray will never be recalled. Arnold has Zero chance. He’s such a hack. He was not banned at MSNBC for his Joe S. comments, it’s his whiney no makin sense b.s that got him banned.
Buggy Ding Dong
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Oh, yes., there were a ton of folks in the middle who said “I’ll vote for the war hero with the nutjob running mate who said the fundamentals of the economy are strong the day after Wall Street went Chernobyl.
Why don’t you go look at GOP voting percentages since 1968 and tell me what the minimum GOP base is. I’ll give you a hint: the only times it was less than what McCain got was when there was another Republican in the race.
Oh wait, he wasn’t really a Republican, he was a Reformer/American Independent.
The last 60+ years has shown that a dead white man with an R next to his name can get a mininimum of 45 percent of the vote (unless the incumbent Democratic president at the time is assassinated a year out before the election and his VP is a nut-cutting mother fucker who will say “my opponent will destroy the world if elected” in pictures or if he has an even more crazy Republican in the race with him.
Sandmann
@wengler:
They don’t, but they can be useful idiots to the GOP by parroting their soundbytes (Jimmy Carter, Hopey Changey, weak, over his head, ad nauseum). The Left sat on their hands for the 2010 primaries and now they want to snivel about compromise and such….boo damn hoo.
Any bets on when the first ‘Primary Obama’ action diary goes up at DKos?
Christin
@Dennis SGMM:
Dennis – I want to say I will try not be a jerk. But that would be like asking me not to be a jerk. In the meantime, if I see some long haired hippie walking up my driveway to ask for my vote I will yell DENNNNNNNNIS!!! and take the daisies out of my hair and give you one.
NR
@Comrade Luke:
This pretty much sums up the Obama presidency. Republican policy enacted by Democrats so that when it fucks people over, as Republican policy inevitably does, the left gets blamed. It’s the best of both worlds for the Republicans.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: Thank God the Democrats still hold that branch!
Short Bus Bully
Awesome post Dennis.
I get pissed at Obama like the rest of the Left, but it’s good that you remind me from time to time how much petty, short term, small minded, weak-assed shit the Left kicks out when the magical unicorn doesn’t show up on time.
Fuck yeah.
FlipYrWhig
@Ija: From context when Gibbs first said it, “professional left” basically means “outrage merchants.” Then after he said it, the big blogs and big media liberals fell all over themselves to say, “no, it’s not just us, Obama insulted all of _you_, the people who listen to us!” And they duly became upset. So, because they took up the label of “professional left,” the “professional left” now includes many, _many_ amateurs and hobbyists. Instead of outrage merchants, you’ve got outrage swappers and people who just enjoy making outrage projects for their friends. Think of Daily Kos as a kind of Etsy for indignation.
JenJen
Awww, Dennis. Great read. Needed that.
By the way, in case you missed it, I think you’d enjoy Lawrence O’Donnell’s opening segment from last night’s “The Last Word” at least as much as I did (which was very, very, very much).
NR
@Sandmann:
The same left that everyone here constantly says is completely irrelevant?
I’m confused. Is the left irrelevant, or do they have the power to decide Obama’s fate? It can’t be both.
Christin
@Sandmann:
I will bet you five billions of dollars they went up last week.
You owes me five billions of dollars.
Paypal?
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
You left this out from your article Flip:
This is why Obama isn’t a fucking leader. A leader would have not deferred on on one of his central campaign issue.
He did the same thing with the HCR–pitched it to Baucus and the Gang of 6 and let them have a circle jerk for months.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Christin:
Thanks for bring that up. I forgot about that. He put the blogs full resources behind Cruz Bustamante, who got slaughtered.
Christin
@JenJen:
I love Lawrence O’Donnell’s new show.
ANd I thought I would hate it. I stopped watching Keith and Ed et al. a year ago.
But LO’d does all sides without yelling screaming or lying.
Even when I disagree with him I love his take on things.
Groucho48
I like Ezra Klein, but, he’s playing games with the numbers. He is assuming that the tax cuts for the rich and the estate tax lowering will end in two years. I think there is approximately zero chance of that happening. And, why do tax cuts for businesses get put on the Democratic side of the ledger? I know the specific tax breaks were Democratic proposals, but, they would be more than acceptable to Republicans if Obama had simply said he would let them get credit for proposing them. As to the hiatus in payroll taxes…that’s just going to give the right more ammo in their “SS is bankrupt” meme. I think it’s a strong clue that Obama goes along with the right wing wisdom on the evils of SS. SS is either, as liberals believe, a program that pays for itself and its payments are earned and deserved by its recipients, or, as the right pretends to believe, it’s just another form of welfare in which the poor and middle class are leaching off their betters. Every thing Obama does indicates he leans towards the latter position.
I do happen to be a person who thinks Obama is a lousy wheeler-dealer. I have no problem with compromise, but, Obama doesn’t do quid pro quo bargaining. He states a position, then, after doing no marketing of that position, and after a few weeks of being hammered in the media, and after Pelosi rolls up her sleeves and lines up the votes, he caves.
We should have gotten a stronger stimulus. Not a 2 trillion dollar transformative one, which we on the left called for, but better than a 750 billion one with one-third of that tax breaks to appease Republicans.
We could have had a much better health care reform bill. Not single payer universal, which was the left’s starting position, and not the strong public option, which we pinned our hopes on, but, a weak public option, or, most likely, lowering the Medicare age to 55, leaving the door open to lower the age even further. But, once again, Obama didn’t use the bully pulpit at all, and, once again, he left Pelosi and the House to dangle, dangle in the breeze.
I don’t even want to mention the horror that was the deficit reduction panel. Yes, the final result wasn’t as awful as it looked like it was going to be, but, why was the panel stuffed with folks who hate SS? SS shouldn’t even have been on the agenda.
Same with the Federal salary freeze. That is basically telling the world that either Obama believes all the right wing talking points or he is a coward, and a stupid one at that. The kind of stupid that makes a kid give his lunch money to the bully in homeroom in the hope the bully won’t beat him up at recess.
Does this rant mean I hate Obama? No. I’ll vote for him again. He was the best person for the job. I don’t think Clinton would have done health care. I think she would have done about the same in regards to Afghanistan and the auto bailout. Though, I will say, Obama did a very good job on the auto bailouts. I think she would have gotten a better stimulus. I also think she, and hubby, would have made much more use of the bully pulpit. I bet old Bill wouldn’t let the right win the SS war. I think she would also have been a bit more aggressive in her Supreme Court nominees. DADT would be gone.
But, having said that, I can’t give his administration, so far, any better than a C. If he caves to the Generals on Afghanistan, which is very likely, that grade drops to a C- or D+. Classic underachiever.
Sandmann
@Christin:
Paypal is good for me :)
Dennis SGMM
@FlipYrWhig:
True, that. I hit the streets in the Sixties and there were plenty of us back then. Later, I participated in anti-Iraq-war protests in downtown Los Angeles and it just made me sad that most of us were geriatrics.
I’m too damned old now to take a casual couple of swipes of the baton from the cops. If those who are younger and stronger don’t care to stand up for what they believe in, or if as seems apparent, they don’t know what they believe in then fuck them: they’ve earned their fate.
WyldPirate
@Comrade Luke:
Read Flip’s comment at #130 and mine at #158.
Leaders have to lead, y’know.
I agree on Mark Penn and who was that douchebag that ran Kerry’s campaign? Bunch of fucking eunuchs, the lot of them.
mcd410x
Dennis, your writing is really good. Especially when it’s about the Dead-Enders. Leave this trope to DougJ.
Christin
@Mike Kay (Team America):
i laugh when Kos says that’s how it’s gonna be.
swear to christ that’s why on one wants him on their shows and no one bought his book.
i can make better predictions and analysis.
he just screeches lately.
LOOK AT ME!!! stop looking over at Huffington Post. IT”S ME!
the only time he is right is when it’s so obvious.
i.e.: Obama won (november 20 2008)
WyldPirate
@WyldPirate:
The paragraph below the blockquote in the link above is from the NY Times article.
Damn Google Chrome FAIL…..
Christin
@Dennis SGMM:
I dragged my poor SO to two anti war rallies in NYC. Count em! two.
one in 90909 degree heat. the other 394898 below zero.
See?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Comrade Luke:
people want to dump on obama. that’s fine. but how was obama going to shove a bill down the senate’s throat when even flaming liberals like boxer and murray couldn’t stomach it.
Buggy Ding Dong
@amk:
And just what were you and the great Dennis and John Cole doing?
I’ll put my shoe leather, phoning, block-walking, organizing and now oppo research up against pretty much anyone since 1992. I’m in this because I believe Republicans are out to fuck everyone they can as often as they can and have gone from moderate Republican teenager/18 year old in the 80s to raving left-winger as I watched Republicans constantly just stand up for what they believe, evil as it is, and just go from there, while Democrats keep compromising away whatever their principles are in order “to get something done.” For years, Republicans would throw a pile of shit on the floor and instead of Democrats standing back and saying “these guys want to give you a pile of shit”, we put a hat on it, give it a scarf and say we made it better.
We get a guy who says that he’s going to be transformative, we listen to his supporters excoriate Bill Clinton for being “Republican Lite” and then they rip anyone who points out that the man with “steel in his spine” has pre-compromised left and right and has done very little demagouging from the bully pulpit to put actual pressure on Republicans in vulnerable areas and against shitbags like Nelson, Lincoln and Lieberman.
Forgive me if that pisses me off.
I get more pissed at fucksticks like John Cole and Dennis G telling everyone that DADT and fucking climate change were lost because liberals didn’t just fall into line for a health care bill that pretty much gives the store away to insurance companies while offering next to no cost controls when it was Barack Fucking Obama who pushed health care first over those issues. He pre-compromised on the fucking stimulus by putting in what the GOP wanted before anything else. Even he now admits that was a giant mistake, but if anyone here or on the left brings it up, we’re fucking splitters with the Judean People’s Front.
i guess it is just funny that the folks that almost never get what they want, but pretty much always end up turning out, walking blocks and sending in money are the ones that fucked it all up. Obama would have gotten everything if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
cat48
@Dennis G Dennis take me with you to your new sane home when you arrive……..you know, a true reality, pragmatic place with folks who can count votes & realize how the House & Senate works & what must be done ASAP so we can pass something else! We’ll never get anything done with the Professional Left driving LOUDLY!
On a personal note, I’m nobody, who is absolutely stunned by a Cable Channel who starts at 600a.m. attacking the Prez; goes to semistraight political news @900a.m. until returns at 4,6,8, 9, & occasionally 10 & to attack the prez for most of their hour. This is the “liberal network! It is totally a new thing b/c I’m a Cable addict…absolutely stunning to see them attack him as ferociously as they did Bush about domestic policy! The Professional Left, ladies & gents! They will kill your feckless prez for you, no problem FDL, Kos, Salon Mag, etc. We will pay you to come on repeatedly & attack him! The PL has their own TV Network too. Bless their hearts!
Christin
@Sandmann:
Just send it to OFA in my name please.
And let Glen Greenwald and everyone at Dkos know.
That would be awesome.
Thanks.
amk
@Christin: Well, you’ve your “Resign Now” diary at gos now. Primarying is not enough. They want their ponies right now, dammit.
Dennis SGMM
@Christin:
If you’re in CA-26 and I somehow missed you then, as soon as possible, I will walk up your driveway and I will gladly accept the daisy.
l’ll even bring a six pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and we can imbibe and discuss why “Harvey” is the greatest movie ever made.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: FTW
WyldPirate
@Christin:
O’Donnell goes off on at least one of his “guests nearly every night.
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: I linked the whole article and said that it didn’t whitewash anyone involved. I still find significantly more culpability in the Senate. You could say, and others have, that Obama defers too much to the legislative branch, but, you know, the legislative branch can at least attempt to solve its own fucking problems, rather than pointing fingers every time it fails. They complain when Obama provides too much leadership, and they complain when he provides too little. It’s almost as though they always have a built-in excuse whenever they fuck up!
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Groucho48: only in the drunken self important blogosphere would the first black president in the annals of western civilization be considered an underachiever.
WyldPirate
@JenJen:
Yes, you Obots appear to enjoy having your daily smoke blown up your ass.
It must cool off the fever caused by the raging cognitive dissonance.
Rathskeller
@mnpundit: unfortunately, you are right. The agreement extends the time an individual is eligible, but it doesn’t extend the cap for anyone beyond 99 weeks. Depressing. I don’t think Obama had much choice, but it’s still depressing.
Uriel
@Buggy Ding Dong:
Sorry, but I’ve got to fess up: greasy hippies knocking on my door really doesn’t encourage me to do much of anything, apart from pretending to be gone in the hopes they’ll leave.
it’s an idiosyncrasy on my part, I’ll admit…
Bob Loblaw
@mnpundit:
About strictly policy? Almost never. That’s why the trick has always been to carefully screen the range of “possible” legislative and executive options such that the liberal choice is never even included. That way, when said liberals turn to bitching about the inherent unfairness of the division of labor, the system’s acolytes can wield it against them and criticize their lack of constructiveness and pragmatic thinking. It’s a masterful plan.
That said, this Dennis post is a fucking mess of contradictions. I honestly don’t even know what to make of it.
And failing. That’s more or less the problem. Being a self-described “pragmatist” or “realist” or whatever “ist” one chooses to call one’s self carries no infallibility either. For a post where you deride dick measuring contests, Dennis, you’ve proven to be a self-aggrandizing ass on the same level of the nebulously defined Professional Left.
I operate on the William Goldman principle that nobody knows anything about tactical politics until after the fact. If all of these so-called “sneaky brilliant” stimulus tax cuts don’t actually provide job creation commensurate to their cost a year from now, I guarantee that will somehow become the Other’s (whichever side that is, depending on the person) fault anyway somehow. Nobody is ever accountable for anything.
I wish people were more concerned with the slow demise of welfare statism and the conservative triumph on the topic of progressive taxation and egalitarianism, than trying to prove which side is more responsible for it while it’s happening.
Crusty Dem
Listen, I understand that sometimes, due to political exigencies, we’re going to get served a shit sandwich. It happens, I get it. It’d be really nice if Obama at least appeared to push for something better, I mean, pragmatism doesn’t mean you have to give in to every offer, but whatever. What I don’t expect is to be insulted for noticing it’s shit. “But it’s on a Kaiser roll, you’ve got to appreciate that!” Uh, yeah, I guess that’s nice, I mean, I rather it not be a shit sandwich, but ok..
JenJen
@Christin: Oh, Lawrence yells. And he can be as smug as Keith Olbermann in high dudgeon. But I love both of ’em, even when they couldn’t possibly disagree more (as they do on this tax cuts issue, and Obama’s stance).
Ed is a lot better on the radio, if you ask me.
But, for my money, “The Last Word” is rapidly becoming my favorite show on MSNBC. Lawrence is a policy wonk of the highest order, he consistently lands the best and most fascinating guests, he’s expert at painting some of those guests into well-deserved rhetorical corners, and his “Rewrite” segment kicks ass every evening.
I’ll bet even the Lawrence-haters could appreciate this epic Rewrite takedown of Mary Landrieu from last night’s show.
@WyldPirate: Oh, all right. So now the mere act of personally complimenting a front-pager on a thoughtful piece that I enjoyed is all it takes to send you into yet another dizzying insult-hurling dervish? As if my thanking Dennis had anything to do with you, and was some sort of personal affront to you? Good grief, you’re tiresome.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Buggy Ding Dong:
You do know that anyone can say they are anything on teh internets, right? That someone can fluff up their ‘resume’ in an attempt to validate something they say? I’m not saying that you are doing that but any time someone decides to lay their pipe out on the internet so others can be totally awed at it, I’m not. Never am either. You are just another mouth on the internet, no more and no less.
I do not expect you to prove that anything you said is true because I could not care less. After dismissing all of that, there isn’t much left but your obvious outrage at Obama.
Get in line, it’s a short but loud one.
Rathskeller
@WyldPirate: Just for a change of pace, can you outline what Obama should have done, instead of being an endless, insufferable, fountain of contempt for him and anyone who supports him.
So, tell us. You’re Obama. What did you start doing a month or a year ago that would have this decision absolutely impossible? How did you get GOP votes to agree to tax increases? How did you stop egoists and hacks like Lieberman and Nelson from voting against you?
Try not to use the phrase bully pulpit.
FlipYrWhig
@Groucho48: All the “appeasements” you cite are to appease conservative Democrats at least as much as they are to appease Republicans. Sometimes you get them both, like placating Nelson, Snowe, and Specter on the stimulus. But consider it. If Obama has to bring conservative Democrats aboard to have any hope of breaking the filibuster, he has to give _them_ something, no? And what they want is very much in keeping with what Republicans want, that is, lower taxes and less spending. Or he can twist their arms, which is what seems to be the more popular suggestion, but they use hostage-taker logic too: hurt me, and a Republican takes me place, so stay back and don’t make any sudden moves.
I hear a lot about how Obama appeases Republicans, but virtually no Republicans ever vote for this stuff. Either (1) he’s unbelievably stupid, a huge coward, and doesn’t even understand what appeasement is because he never manages to appease anyone; or (2) he’s appeasing someone else: the people in his own party who don’t really want to do anything he wants. Over the past few months angrier and angrier people have been insisting it’s (1). What if it’s (2)? Does that change your mind at all?
freelancer
@JenJen:
Phew, I wish I had a cigarette right now. That’s why child-typist Ezra made the big time, and the other three bloggers looked like butthurt orphans cause they got a Mommy and Daddy with 30K a year instead of Daddy Warbucks.
The deal sucks. But it’s what’s possible. We can’t govern according to fee-fees. We can only do what’s possible, and if you want to move that overton window, we need to marginalize the super-rich, the extra-dumb, and the ultra-gullible. Keep in mind, this is America, so grab a shovel, Jane, and put your back into it, ’cause right now you’re not making it any easier.
If I didn’t loathe Repubs so much, I’d be at war with bullshit-driven leftists everyday. I’d be busy for quite a bit. Which isn’t to say I’d be out of knives for the White House itself:
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
If heard the latter complaint, but not the former. However, that is not an uncommon situation in any organization. There’s an old adage about the military that if “a soldier isn’t bitching about something he isn’t happy”.
I know you say that you said that there was “plenty of blame to go around”, and I don’t disagree that the Congress–specifically the Senate (and Reid who I think shouldn’t lead a circle jerk, much less the Dem majority) share some blame–but it seems that you always manage to twist yourself into a pretzel to avoid blaming Obama for anything.
I’ll keep an eye out for when you do cast any blame at Obama. I have this feeling that it will be about as frequent as a lunar eclipse.
Uriel
@Mike Kay (Team America):
This really needs to be mentioned more often than it is.
I mean, I remember pundits(and others) concern trolling doom over “the Bradly effect” even as the vote tallies declaring him the winner were being reported. I really don’t understand how this issue got regulated to the “eh, any one coulda done that” category.
the farmer
@WyldPirate #163
In reality, leaders do this all the time (Is this your first shindy dance or what?) Unless they are dictators. They do this (deferring thing) because they (the ones operating in democracies) have to deal with dissenting opposition parties and positions and all that yucky sucky messy representative democracy stuff.
Shorter WyldPirate: why can’t we have a real Dear Leader. Careful Wyld Pirate, next thing you know you’ll have Glenn (fanboy for the Citizen United decision) Greenwald breathing down the neck of your puffy pirate shirt about your preeeening lusty desires for a greater fucking authoritarianism.
*
JenJen
@freelancer: In an earlier open thread, I said how striking it is to me, every time I see him, how “all grown-up” Ezra is these days. We’ve been reading him since he was in high school, it seems. Actually, I’m thinking maybe he really was still in high school.
And the thing is, a lot of people who really should watch that video won’t, just because of Ezra, and that’s a shame, because he’s quite critical of the President, agrees wholeheartedly with those of us who think the White House messaging has sucked ass, and yet reaches a rational conclusion that really deserves a full hearing.
That was one riveting segment right there. Also, as someone commented on Twitter earlier tonight, Jane should really think about getting her shit together before taking on a guy who used to write tax policy for a living (Lawrence). Cringeworthy at times, wasn’t it?
Mike Kay (Team America)
Dennis raises a great point:
Why do they hate being called the Professional Left? That’s how they earn their living. Kos and his colleagues actually cash checks for running blogs catering to the left.
Martin
@Comrade Luke: I’m in that boat. We’re in the middle.
Let me ask this – if the Republicans were offering some meaningful direction on issues, something evidence-based, would you consider voting for them? My issue with the GOP is that I would like to see progress as a society. If they were calling for progress in education, infrastructure, technology leadership, etc. I’d give them some attention. They aren’t and these aren’t things that should be ideological off limits to them. But right now, even Dems making no effort is going to win me over the GOP war on science.
We’re a guaranteed Dem vote right now not because we think that single payer is the only way, and that there is no tax on the wealthy too high, or whatever, but because the GOP is literally offering no solutions.
Comrade Luke
@Martin:
I have a hard time answering this yes, because Republicans have never done this in my lifetime, so I can’t even mentally conceive of that being a possibility.
My first political memories were of Reagan, and thinking he wasn’t making much sense (I was nowhere near as rabid anti-Republican then). Then, Bush I. Then, Clinton, which seemed great at the time.
And then ’94. That’s when everything went to hell for me and I became the rabid Republican hater I am today.
I will say this though: from what I’ve read, Eisenhower seemed pretty reasonable :)
ETA: BTW, I do think that something like single payer is the best way, and that taxes need to be significantly raised on the rich (but there is a limit). That said, I also understand that you need to negotiate, and that while some form of single payer (for example) is imo the best way to go, it’s something you need to work toward eventually, not all or nothing, first thing. Hope that makes sense.
dms
@Dennis G.: And when you get a chance to “talk” about it, you name no names, give no real examples, and post no cites.
This post is a pile of crap.
freelancer
@JenJen:
I enjoyed it. Merely because he came across as a pro. The camera shy bloggers were totally gunshy and stuck to one mode of thinking. I’m sorry. I’m Ezra’s age, and even I know that if I’m going on a “friendly network”, to speak with integrity, and to prepare for every question. Even now, I’m capable of holding to diametrically opposed ideas in my head, like “This DEAL sucks!” and “This deal is better than anything I’m going to get a month from now or till the campaign. I can’t let unemployment die, I just can’t.” The nuance is hard, but doable, and the negotiating skill of this WH (at least the narrative of it) has made most lefties found wanting.
More to say but it’s 2am here. I’m going to bed.
cat48
@Gian: So Ezra, the Economist, & PL Krugman are wrong because Krugman said better than expected when he actually saw it. Of course, the stimulus was too small! Obama Fault, etc! Ezra said rethugs were robbed!
Edit: Ezra said SocSec funds would be retd by GENRev, deal calls for it.
JobiusPublius
Never blame the guy actively trying to fuck you up, spitting in your face even. Always blame somebody else.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@JenJen: oh, that clip of lawerence smacking down Landieu is fantastic. thank you.
I didn’t know Landieu had originally voted for the bush tax cuts in 2001. Now she’s calling her very own vote “morally corrupt”.
Heh!
FlipYrWhig
@WyldPirate: I specified that the pay freeze idea was dumb, and the discretionary funding freeze idea before that was also dumb. I think you can find plenty of bad things going on in the executive branch.
I don’t find Obama to have done much wrong with legislation because I think the legislature should solve its own damn problems and because I think “leadership” is an illusion like “team chemistry” and “clutch hitting.” Attributing some bad legislative outcome to Obama’s lack of “leadership” is just circular: no one gets credit for leadership without success, just like no losing sports team is described as having good chemistry. These are all self-authorizing descriptions: leadership is winning and winning is leadership, around and around it goes.
I also think that conservative Democrats have a very potent trump card, which is that if you try to retaliate against them, they either get stronger or make way for an even worse actual Republican. I think the slicing and dicing of demographic data and poll results made a lot of politicians realize precisely how much leverage they have, and how hard it is to make them do things they don’t want to do. Republicans have solved this issue by only electing ones who do what they’re told. Democrats don’t embrace those kinds of candidates as readily.
And, in general, look, the kind of question I like to come in here and kick around is, when a politician who seems to be not an obvious moron does something or supports a position that looks bad: “why the hell would he do that? Is it possible that there’s an explanation other than, ‘It turned out he was an obvious moron after all’?” I just think that’s interesting to consider. When I read what a politician has said, and it seems all garbled up, I think, “What did he mean to say? What is he thinking of?”
I don’t get an awful lot out of saying, “Sucky politician sucks again.” I guess sometimes it’s gratifying to get mad, or to do the “This milk smells terrible, smell it!” thing. I’d rather talk about what else could have happened, and how Politician X–or us–could have helped make it so.
JC
Well, Dennis, here’s the thing. This post is talking about a certain type of democrats, yes, the wide-eyed FDL’er.
Guys, please read this post, and respond. Two parts.
Part 1: Response to Dennis
Part 2: Conjecture about Obama’s political play
Part 1: Response to Dennis
This post overgeneralizes wildly, in two ways.
a. Making all objections and concerns to Obama’s policy stances an equivalence to FDL’ers.
b. Connected these concerns, in a big leap, to being responsible for losing actual policy fights.
Both of these are silly, really.
Fact #1: The inequality of income and assets in this country, and the shift in asset collection to not enough tax collection, or overburdened middle class, instead of the rich, the investors (15%), and the corporations is a huge, and growing problem. It is also Republican policy.
Fact #2: The Bush tax cut was incredibly, absolutely, perniciously cynical, breathtakingly irresponsible, and also masterful, in a political sense. And weighted to accomplishing the acceleration of Fact #1 above. We pragmatic moderates, liberals, and left, know the above two facts. They are indisputable.
Fact #3: One of the things that Obama ran on is pushing AGAINST – stopping, delaying, bending the curve, whatever – the two facts above, or the Bush tax cut. The cynical irresponsibility of it, as policy and as principle.
Fact #4: A democratic President, House, and Senate, accede to accepting the minority’s position, on one of the minority’s most pernicious irresponsible acts – Bush’s tax act. And were willing to blow up the nation to get it.
You don’t think people have a reason to be pissed? Upset? Concerned? Frustrated? Democrats have all three branches of government, and they MUST extend one of the most pernicious acts of the previous administration, and one of the most pernicious and cynical policy goals of the minority?
Your post, Dennis, papers over all of this, in favor of a strawman of ‘Professional Left infallibility’.
Well, I do agree, the PL in the United States are POLITICALLY – very, hugely, extremely – infallible.
But the facts above are right on reality – on substance. And we, naively, think that if you do the policy right, the politics will fall into place, if you ‘just try hard enough’.
And that simply is untrue. On the political level. Grayson is an example of this.
This brings us to –
Part 2: Obama’s Political Play
This is a supposition, but I’m going to run with it.
Obama and his team are fucking political geniuses. Much smarter than any of the rest of us are, in the politics of this. Let’s look at the political facts.
a. The professional left, CAN be taken for granted. Sorry, that’s just the fact. We get a Palin, or a Christie, or any other of these Republican idiots, HELL NO will we let those guys win. We’ll work our butt off to take him out. An example. Clinton’s impeachment. Clinton is basically a moderate Republican, let’s face facts. He enjoyed hippie punching, did it with glee. But who had his back, more than anyone else, when it came to impeachment? Who defended him?
We did. Because it was bullshit, and we recognized it, and we got outraged, and we worked.
b. Obama accomplished WHAT COULD BE ACCOMPLISHED, given the fucked up Senate. That is simply the truth. But the american environment shifted, as evidenced by the November 2010 elections.
c. The new political reality is, the Republican House will take over, and will now attempt to setup more lose-lose situations for Obama.
d. By going this route, Obama has done a HOST of things, to setup the 2012 race.
a. Added more stimulus – the last time he will be able to do so. This is the #1 predictor of election success, and he extracted the last bit he could get, to up the possibility of the economy turning around.
b. Deprived Republicans of their #1 potent weapon against Democrats – tax cuts.
c. Already started to setup the Republicans as “hostage takers”, himself as the ‘pragmatic man’, and also dissed the left as ‘idealogues’, he has personally staked the claim to being the only adult in the room. And he has the press on his side, eating it up, because hippy punching is always a good thing, for them. (Plus they get their millionaire tax cuts).
d. He is the guy ‘standing up for the middle class’, not the Rethugs or the Moonbats. He is the good guy, and got everyone to ‘agree’.
e. He also knows – as we do – that the Republicans WILL get their crazy on – in some form or fashion – as the leaders of the House. It’s inevitable. Thus, he will have evidence to back up his ‘crazy Rethug hostage takers’ comment above.
f. So the persuadables – the people who are undecided – will vote on the economy, as stated above – and will vote for the adult. And Obama is now ‘the pragmatist’. “The caring pragmatist’. The ‘adult in the room’. He already is this, of course. But my bet is from now on, he will be the voice of calm strong assurance, pragmatic and experienced. Your dad. Your lovable wise uncle. The pragmatist. Inspiring is over – pragmatism is in! My own thought is this is EXACTY the right move, to win an election.
Now, is this move ‘devoid of policy principle’?
Yes.
Does it seem to insure the acceleration of the divide between the haves and the have nots?
Yes.
Does it worsen the systemic issue of the deficit?
Yes.
Good luck Republicans trying to RUN on the deficit though.
So, what did he have to sacrifice? Why, the sacred tenet of policy, had to be sacrificed for the good of the politics.
Bottom line.
And that Obama could so coldly, professionally, and consummately switch on a dime, on what I still believe he thinks, from a policy perspective is a horrible policy, and something he KNOWS is horrible – the Bush tax cuts – seems to me to simply put Obama in a completely different realm of politician from anyone else. He is gaming out the next election, and doing it well.
In this sense, he has shown himself just as cynically political, just as Machievellian, as the Rethugs who have been hostage takers.
Politically, what looks like a capitulation, might end up being a judo move.
Will it work?
Hell if I know.
But Obama and his crew – these guys know their politics. And it is, politically, not only a great play, but executed flawlessly by Obama himself.
Triangulation, but like Clinton, good triangulation – the kind that works, given the United States political environment.
I am probably overthinking this – but I did like writing it. Too bad I got home at 11 this evening, and am posting it at midnight my time (Pacific). so, this will get lost in the cellar of this post.
cat48
@JenJen:
I adore Lawrence now, I’m now an O’Donnelbot, too! My twitter feed funniest comment: “If I were near Lawrence, I would kiss him on the mouth!”
Ripley
Mid-November, 2008?
JenJen
@Mike Kay (Team America): My pleasure. I mean, that had to sting Landrieu hard, if she’s even heard it. Hope she does.
@cat48: Twitter was very entertaining during the MSNBC primetime block this evening, wasn’t it? Amazing how you’ll never get those kinds of hour-to-hour, wildly-varying, at times diametrically opposed views from network personalities on, well, you know, Fox.
Mnemosyne
@MobiusKlein:
You mean the townhall pseudo-riots that the professional left sat back and watched from a distance?
I’ve still seen no explanation of why people on the left sat on their asses and allowed the teabaggers to dominate the entire summer with their screaming about “death panels.” Did Max Baucus make them do it?
Martin Gifford
@Comrade Luke:
Best comment I have ever read on any political blog ever!
Thanks, Comrade Luke.
Random User Name
Jumping in before reading the comments to say BRAVO! dengre.
I’m glad the Prez called out the Progressive Purity Patrol today, because the last thing this country needs is for the Dems to get taken over by the mirror image of the Teabaggers.
I ditched my early 2005 UID at the Great Orange Satan this past spring during the health care debates because I didn’t want to be able to read the hidden comments any more, it got really awful. I’ve gone there less often ever since, and now I mostly just go to point and laugh, much as I used to do at the Freepers or LGF. What does it say that Little Green Footballs now seems like a saner place to me than Daily Kos?
I’ve always suspected that the reason the left is so pissed off at Obama is because he refuses to act like Bush did for the right, for them.
Crusty Dem
@JC:
Nailed it.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Dollared: I call bullshit on your $25K figure, I don’t give a damn how many mouths you’ve got at your table.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@JenJen:
that clip show how much of a light weight Jane is on policy. Whatever talents she may have, policy isn’t one of them.
If a wingnut had perfomed that badly on Fox, the blogs would running the clip in a loop all day and night. Even Stewart and Colbert would be serving it up for laughs.
Martin
@Buggy Ding Dong:
Tell that to GHWB who got 37% of the vote in 1992. Mondale and Dole each got a solid 40%. Not one swing voter? Really? And that doesn’t mean that independents don’t lean left/right – just that they aren’t guaranteed votes, and that some will get peeled off.
And you don’t give McCain enough credit – the guy is an institution that was going to get a solid hunk of the military vote no matter what, particularly with 2 wars on. Sarah brought in a new demographic (perhaps small), that I would argue have pushed out a chunk of the old Republican base.
And Obama had legitimate downsides. His race was certainly going to be a challenge. He was a lightweight experience-wise, and some voters put a lot of weight on experience – I don’t begrudge them that.
So, I think they both drew off of the independent pool. To say that each party starts at 40% basically suggests that parties regularly nominate candidates that are so horrifically bad that they draw no independents. That’s crap. I think there’s a lot more movement in this group than you want to admit. Just the significant voter swings by state from 2004 to 2008 would bear that out. NC went from R+14 to D+1. Unless there was a massive shift in demographics, there was a big movement outside of the bases.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@WyldPirate: And here his simple-minded ass comes again.
Must be real easy to have a ready-made receptacle for all your frustrations. Give us all a shout when you’re ready to actually think.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@WyldPirate: You are actually a fucking paid troll. I’m convinced of it now.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Luke:
So if Congress decides not to hold a vote, the president is supposed to force them to do it? Lock them into the capitol building until they vote? Travel around the country for three months urging them to do it? Oh, wait, he actually did that last one, and got crickets from the left for his trouble.
I have a feeling you don’t really understand the whole “three co-equal branches of government” thing and think the president can order Congress to hold a vote they don’t want to hold.
FlipYrWhig
@JC: I don’t know if I’d be quite that laudatory, but I also think that part of the point of many Obama moves is to project that sense that we can all reconcile, we can all come together, we can all find common ground, and he will keep taking opportunities to show how Republicans don’t believe in any of that stuff. Even losing a round on policy can help build that “brand”: I made it happen, I put dogma aside, it felt like bitter ashes in my mouth but it was the right thing to do. It doesn’t build a sense of “strength,” perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t build something.
Mike Kay (Team America)
This true.
Most of the comments today didn’t center on the tax deal, but rather on Obama’s “hippie punching”.
What does is say when people are more upset about their fee-fees being hurt then actual policy. Good bye ideals, hello butthurt emotions.
cat48
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
the farmer
@JenJen #160
I saw that show too. O’Donnell made quick work of Hamsher, Adam Green and some dork that I never heard of before who began haplessly jabbering about Woodrow Wilson at one point. Christ, what a mercy killing. And Hamsher just sat there looking like a dashboard widget.
*
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: They were completely unprepared to defend even the concept that health care needs reform, but it did allow them to engage in a certain amount of humor at the expense of inferiors.
That said, it was far easier to do what the professional right did that summer than what the professional left was prepared to do, since the general outline of the bill was there but it was not nearly ready for a vote. Its hard to defend something that isn’t final. What the PL was good at doing was making their own readers scared of the bill as it evolved while directing their attention to outbursts from the inferior people at the town halls.
WyldPirate
@Rathskeller:
Go up to link #163 and read thethe blockquoted paragraph and the one below it, It is from an NYT article on the “planning” and timeline that lead up to the tax debacle first.
After that, this:
1. If you are Obama–and you’re in the strategy sessions as he or his reps were over a year ago according to the article–you first don’t “largely defer to Democratic leaders” on when to bring up this central portion of your campaign plank that you were going to use to help finance HCR for FSM sake. You ARE the goddamned leader of the Democratic Party. You take fucking charge and say that raising the rates to the Clinton levels on the upper bracket, along with HCR, are your top priorities of the legisative agenda for the rest of 2009 up through the election in 2010.
2. You have several alternative plans and a timetable to do it in. You put together a message team. Your strategy should be what he talked about some today-that it is fundamentally unfair for the rich to get such huge cuts. That the nation cannot afford it. That it has been tried for ten years and there are fewer jobs and fewer people working now than when they were instituted. That the Rethugs are lying through their teeth when they say a.)the cuts create American jobs and b.) that they have a pitiful economic stimulative effect because rich people are investing and sending American jobs overseas. You have fucking facts on your side that will fit on three fucking charts for FSM’s sake. You emphasize the Rethugs are simply looking out for the richest 2% at the expense of everyone else. You point out the wild rise in income for the rich over the decade and the stagnation of middle class wages and earnings. You tell the motherfucking truth to the electorate with some passion showing that you care about them.
3. You count noses in your caucus and identify the recalcitrant fucksticks who are the trouble makers in your caucus. You threaten their ass with any leverage you have behind closed doors. If they are going to be in an election that is close, you threaten to withhold any support if they don’t vote your way. Threaten to withold or stymie anything they may want. If you hafve anything to positively “bribe” them with you do it. If you have dirt on them, threaten to release it. If you don’t, try to FIND dirt on them. You become a “{nut cutter” like LBJ was. If they are uncooperative, you go to their state and hammer the message home to the point of embarrassing the dickwad BlueDog Senators that are traitors. You do that to the Rethugs you target for rolling, too. You bang on these fuckers all summer and fall prior to the election at every opportunity.
4. You can the reasonableness. It was obvious in the first three months of his administration that the Republicans were not going to cooperate. That they are out to destroy you. They have been saying that very thing publically and loudly for months. You come out with the tone he used today on this issue. You tell the nation that the Rethugs are holding the nation hostage and plunging it into unmanageable debt for the sake of a few thousand millionaires and billionaires. You say this over and over
5. You start out with the strongest bill possible. You do not give a fucking thing away before you start. You have the votes going on in September and October before the break. If the Rethugs are going to be dicks–which they would have been–you blitz the hell out of the airwaves with your message. This is how Bush sold the Iraq AUMF–right before the election. The commercials would have written themselves and were demonstrably true–the Rethugs are in the pocket of the rich and it would have resonated more loudly than the “traitor” BS and Saddam Hussein/Bin Laden/terrorist sympathizer lies the Rethugs told in the 2002 midterms.
You lead. You don’t wimp out on the most powerful political cudgel you have in your arsenal. You don’t sit on you around with your finger up your ass like a passive-aggressive eunuch. It might not have been successful, but you don’t give up without even fighting and say you might fight for it in two years.
NobodySpecial
@Mnemosyne: No….but the idea was that the right had to go full metal Obama because they had no power in this.
Democrats on the left had the reasonable expectation that with a Democratic president who claimed to want a good health care bill and a majority of Democrats who also claimed to want that health care bill with a PO in both houses, that reasonable efforts to get the others in line would work like it’s been shown to work the last 30 years in both parties. We didn’t need to scream and shout because we put the supposed adults in charge of this thing and they knew what they wanted.
Of course, Obama did not push, and Reid did not push, and Durbin did not whip, and allowed every Democratic Senator who wanted to be the 41st Republican to get their fair turn at whacking the bill, and did nothing to any of them for their intransigence. At some point, you have to assign some blame to Obama for the mistakes he made and not wave it off with ‘Show me 60 votes’ or ‘Nothing could be done’.
WyldPirate
@the farmer:
Shorter “the farmer”–“don;t hold Obama responsible for anything. He is the teflon President.
How the fuck to you think the Bushies got the Iraq AUMF passed you twit? The bludgeoned the hell out of the Dems. The accused a crippled war hero running for election of being an OBL and saddam sympathezer.
How do you think they got the damned tax cuts passed? With 50 votes? They bludgeoned the shit out of people.
Politics isn’t a damned church picnic. The Rethugs do not play that way and they are eating the Democrats lunch because the passivity of the entire Democratic Party starting with the lack of negotiation skills of the President who seems to want to concede everything in his bargaining position out of the gate.
What did the “cooperative approach” get Obama? Nothing yet, really. If it goes into effect a huge hole in the budget results that the Rethugs will bludgeon him with in 2012. Then they will bludgeon him if he tries to raise taxes in 2012. It took away a load of SS revenue that it might be impossible to restore for another decade.
Mnemosyne
@NobodySpecial:
No, you walked away and let the teabaggers and the Republicans take over the conversation unchallenged. You couldn’t be bothered to fight for what you wanted. You handed everything over to politicians and now you’re whining because those politicians listened to the people who demanded that they be heard.
I guess they didn’t get your psychic messages that they should, like, do the right thing or whatever, since they were kinda busy trying to prevent teabagger riots at their townhalls all summer.
This is what the right knows and the left never, ever seems to learn: if you constantly call your representative and senator and bitch to them, they start to think that the people bitching represent a large part of their constituency. If you never bother to contact them, they don’t know what you want, and they think that the people who do call them are the ones who really want action.
Sorry, but the fractious left deserves a dollop of responsibility for the ACA debate going so wrong. We were so busy arguing with each other that we didn’t notice that the GOP was whipping old white people into such a frenzy with shit like “death panels” that they raced to the polls in record numbers last month to vote out the Democrats who were trying to kill them.
It was a classic Karl Rove maneuver, in retrospect: get your voters riled up under the radar and then set them loose. It’s how he got W elected in 2004 (put anti-gay marriage ballots on every state that could do one) and he pulled the exact same stunt on us again. And we let ourselves be punked, because we were too busy re-fighting the same stupid battles with each other over and over and over again to notice what Rove and the Republicans were doing with all of that free money the Supreme Court handed them.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@wengler:
.
.
Yes, they are. Only a sociopath would deal with them as equals.
.
.
JenJen
@the farmer: Yep. The entire segment was painful to watch, but that was an especially classic moment when dork-I’ve-never-heard-of-either started yammering some Barack Herbert Hoover Obama Hoover Herbert nonsense, and then, as you noted, attempted to draw some Woodrow Wilson analogy before pulling a Jan Brewer-freeze under the klieg lights.
Jane didn’t fare any better, as Mike Kay (Team America) observed above:
Truth.
@Evolved Deep Southerner: If that’s the case, someone, somewhere is owed a refund. ;-)
cat48
jim
Ah, we meet again at last, Circular Firing-Squad. I’d wondered when you’d return.
“The Infallibility of the Professional Left” = WTF??? That really sounds exactly like something out of Breitbart’s playbook.
If you’re talking about the same lunatic-fringe DFHs that said that slashing taxes while fighting two wars on credit would come back to bite America in the ass, yeah, I imagine they’re plenty pissed off, because they know exactly who’s going to get stuck with the bill for all this brilliant maneuvering, & they can count past ten without taking their socks off.
Yes, plainly Obama had no choice but to flush away yet another big campaign promise while showing utter contempt for the massive public support for eliminating freebies for the rich, because there’s zero chance the GOP would ever flip-flop on extending unemployment benefits – oh, wait, actually they flip-flop on it EVERY TIME IT COMES UP. But he got an awesome deal … for a mere $900,000,000,000 that isn’t there to spend. Remember this “victory” over the years to come when the brutal spending-cuts arrive. Now watch FOX & the GOP keep right on nailing Obama for taxing Americans to death, reality be damned – & now they can also add “selling away your children’s future” to his list of sins. Plainly this is all the fault of some mythological demon called a “Professional Left” whose real ability to influence DC politics is approximately nil.
tl;dr = Every time you punch a hippy, a Teabagger has an orgasm. When you can muster this much righteous butthurt against the GOP or spineless Congresscritters, you’ll be getting somewhere.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
It’s funny, you keep denying that you want Obama to act like Bush, and then you complain because he didn’t act like Bush.
Republicans literally broke the law during the Medicare Part D vote by threatening to withhold campaign funds from a congressman’s son unless he voted with them. That’s bribery, and it is a crime. But you look at that action and say, “Hey, what a great idea! Why aren’t the Democrats breaking laws so they can get their legislation passed?”
the farmer
WyldPirate:
Like what threats exactly? You’re the monday morning AM radio QB, WP. What would those fuck sticky threats be? Tell us. BTW, you do realize that LBJ didn’t run for a second “nut cutter” term… right? And why do you think that was?
Quack quack.
*
WyldPirate
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
And you would be wrong, which fits with your Obama delusions of greatness which are also wrong.
Got any more stupid conspiracy theories?
Suffern ACE
@NobodySpecial: Another explanation, though, is that the left and the Dems might take the summers off. Seriously. Didn’t we spend August this year talking about the “Ground Zero Mosque” for weeks on end and the August before that talking about “Death Panels?” This summer, I want Obama to control the news cycle in that month. I don’t care if he has to go on TV and express fake outrage about the growing threat of nude beaches. Just don’t cede the month
ChrisNYC
Absolutely perfect post. The presser today made me very glad we have an adult in office.
Groucho48
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree that the Blue Dogs were a huge problem. But, the Blue Dogs and Republicans in charge of writing the health care bill for months, months during which Republicans won the narrative every time largely because Obama was silent. Folks have been trying to reform health care for decades. They all failed. Did he think it was going to be easy? If he was willing to settle for the Bob Dole plan at the start, why didn’t he just do that and be done with it?
But no, he let everyone think he wanted significant, progressive reform and that he would fight for it. But, he didn’t fight at all. Now, he doesn’t deserve all the blame. Whoever in the Senate was responsible for letting that group of Blue Dogs and Republicans spend months crafting a plan that neither Republicans nor Blue Dogs were actually interested in voting for deserves a lot of the blame.
But, when the Republicans started doing their…Death Panels!!! Socialism!!! We have no input!!!…lying, where was Obama? When one of the most important bills of the last 30 years was being shredded by lies and distortions, where was he?
Either Obama should have gone for small, incremental reform on health care from the beginning and saved his political capital for other battles, or, he should have gone all in. And, I don’t think it’s just hindsight that makes this an obvious point. After the stimulus, the auto industry bail out and various other things, it was completely obvious to anyone that Republicans were going scorched earth.
Now, having said all that, I do think even if Obama had pushed more aggressively on everything, we still wouldn’t have rainbows and ponies for everyone. The stimulus, health care, this tax cut business, would all have ended up incrementally better. Not leaps and bounds better.
Where I am really unhappy…with Obama in particular, but, progressive Congressional Democrats as well…is that we have completely lost the propaganda war. We’ve been routed from the field, our houses sacked, our fields sown with salt. The Overton Window is so far to the right that folks are seriously talking about limiting the vote to property holders. THERE is where Obama has really let progressives down. He had a solid majority in the Senate, he had a solid majority in the House and one of the best, most effective Speakers in history; he swept in on a wave of change and idealism, and, wasted almost all of it. He’s the leader of a party that stands for certain things, and, the Republicans have managed to make those things seem evil and unfair. On Obama’s watch. Log Cabin Republicans have been more effective at ending DADT than Obama has. That’s just sad.
Bob Loblaw
@Christin:
@JC:
As the saying goes, the Devil’s greatest con was convincing the world he didn’t exist or whatever.
I don’t see how the Republicans have failed strategically. Then again, I don’t analyze politics from the starting point of a Tex Avery cartoon like Andrew Sullivan, so who knows? The Republicans have never yet found a way to stop lowering the bar on political action in this country. The conservative stranglehold on the country’s basic functions is seemingly undeterred by literally anything, at this point.
They managed to get $140B for all of four million people, and their asking price was the continuation of a basic cornerstone of the social safety net during a period of 10% nationwide unemployment, and a bunch of supply side tax cuts that are turned into “progressive” policy because they actually manage to touch the working class for a change. And then they get to turn around and blast the Democrats some more for running the largest fiscal deficit in modern history. They’ve even managed to use institutional ennui and malaise and turn it into an artform, to the point where we are now surprised to see any bipartisan deal making whatsoever, to the point where what that deal making manages to achieve is completely secondary. They warp the process rightwards, sabotage it anyway, and then in the rare occasion when any work is actually produced, we’re all so stunned we don’t even realize the rhetorical and ideological casualties.
I think JC is far more cogent. If we limit ourselves to asking whether this is a great move for Barack Obama and his reelection campaign, then I think it is a better “get” than the known alternatives. But though Obama is the temporary funnel through which progressive action is possible, his time is necessarily limited. The movement has to be stronger than one guy’s chances for reelection. And I don’t see it happening that way in Congress.
Bob Loblaw
@Christin:
@JC:
As the saying goes, the Devil’s greatest con was convincing the world he didn’t exist or whatever.
I don’t see how the Republicans have failed strategically. Then again, I don’t analyze politics from the starting point of a Tex Avery cartoon like Andrew Sullivan, so who knows? The Republicans have never yet found a way to stop lowering the bar on political action in this country. The conservative stranglehold on the country’s basic functions is seemingly undeterred by literally anything, at this point.
They managed to get $140B for all of four million people, and their asking price was the continuation of a basic cornerstone of the social safety net during a period of 10% nationwide unemployment, and a bunch of supply side tax cuts that are turned into “progressive” policy because they actually manage to touch the working class for a change. And then they get to turn around and blast the Democrats some more for running the largest fiscal deficit in modern history. They’ve even managed to use institutional ennui and malaise and turn it into an artform, to the point where we are now surprised to see any bipartisan deal making whatsoever, to the point where what that deal making manages to achieve is completely secondary. They warp the process rightwards, sabotage it anyway, and then in the rare occasion when any work is actually produced, we’re all so stunned we don’t even realize the rhetorical and ideological casualties.
I think JC is far more cogent. If we limit ourselves to asking whether this is a great move for Barack Obama and his reelection campaign, then I think it is a better “get” than the known alternatives. But though Obama is the temporary funnel through which progressive action is possible, his time is necessarily limited. The movement has to be stronger than one guy’s chances for reelection. And I don’t see it happening that way in Congress.
Dream On
I guess getting everything you want and more in a bill is reserved for George W. Bush and a Republican congress. Sheesh, what was I thinking?
WyldPirate
@Mnemosyne:
Now you are simply putting words in my mouth, Mnemosyne.
The tax hike on the wealthy is the right thing to do for the country. Busting your chops to get the very best deal possible for the country for HCR is the right thing to do. Busting the Wall St. bankers ass for their criminality is the right thing to do. I don’t care if the President has to be a dictatorial prick to get that done. It is what was in the country’s best interest.
Starting a war based on a load of fucking lies WAS NOT the best thing for this country. Authorizing torture WAS NOT the right thing to do. Conducting two wars while instituting the largest tax cut in history–and giving the vast majority to the richest 2% which further increased income inequality–WAS NOT in the best interest of the country. Bush did these things and many more.
Do you really not see the difference? The means to the end are not as important as the result.
JenJen
@WyldPirate:
I’m asking this as earnestly as Lawrence O’Donnell did when he posed the same question to his guests last night: Can you name a Democratic President who successfully convinced Republicans to vote in favor of tax increases?
Don’t throw out that Iraq War Bushie crap again either, unless you’re going just straight-authoritarian. No more apples-to-roast-duck comparisons, please (although, I’d like to state for the record that I don’t find the Max Cleland comparison to be particularly endearing to the case you’re making). If your political strategy here is so foolproof, I’d sincerely be interested in your demonstration of how, in the past, a Democratic President has managed to secure Republican votes against proposed Republican tax cuts.
WyldPirate
@Martin:
And you would be wrong–or full of crap. Take your choice.
1972: Nixon 60.7% McGovern 37.5%
1984: Reagan 58.8% Mondale 40.6%
Google is your friend.
Seebach
(Reuters) – The Australian government on Wednesday blamed the United States, not the WikiLeaks founder, for the unauthorised release of about 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables and said those who originally leaked the documents were legally liable.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd also said the leaks raised questions over the “adequacy” of U.S. security over the cables.
“Mr (Julian) Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorised release of 250,000 documents from the U.S. diplomatic communications network,” Rudd told Reuters in an interview.
“The Americans are responsible for that,” said Rudd, who had been described in one leaked U.S. cable as a “control freak”.
JenJen
@Dream On: Like, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and Social Security Privatization?
the farmer
Tell us brave puffy sleeved swashbuckler: for instance: how would you have used your awesome LBJ trucknutz mad bludgeon skilz to convince Hillary Clinton to refrain from voting for the AUMF?
*
Dream On
@JenJen: Give them time – not 2011 yet.
chaseyourtail
Fucking brilliant post! Thank you, Dennis. Thank you so much for writing this.
chaseyourtail
@Allan:
Lol. This made my night.
Groucho48
A couple of folks commented on my Obama is an under-achiever statement. I wasn’t talking about his whole life…in which, obviously, he is a stupendous overachiever. I was talking about his job as President.
I have come to the belief that he isn’t temperamentally suited to be a great President. I think he would make a superb Supreme Court Justice or a solid Senator, but, he just doesn’t have the tool set to be a Top Ten President.
And before folks jump all over me for daring to judge Obama’s temperament, let me say I think I am very similar, temperament-wise, to Obama. I wouldn’t make a very good President, either.
A President has to have a vision and have the hubris to impose that vision on the whole country. Obama doesn’t have the hubris and, I am becoming less and less sure he has a vision. Though, it’s hard to have a vision when the previous President left you with an exploded economy and two incredibly messed up wars.
electricgrendel
I don’t really understand what you think people are supposed to do? Are people who actually believe in progressive ideals supposed to say “Oh. I would really like to have this bit of legislation, but you’ve got so many more things to cave on, Mr. President, so why don’t you just go ahead and shit all over my ideals and just give in to your corporatist instincts? I won’t fuss, promise.”
So- the only way to bring the country back toward the center (much less the left) politically is to never cause a fuss and always bow to Villager wisdom? That’s patently ridiculous, and I would expect better from you Dennis. Then again- one of the hallmarks of “pragmatists” is that they presume their centrist, compromising wisdom is the highest in the land.
Incidentally- how badly has obstruction gone for the right these past 30 years? How badly has holding their ground gone for them? In case you haven’t noticed this country has lurched rightward, and mainly because the right has fought and fought hard. But I guess progressives are supposed to to move the country back to the left with…centrist magical thinking and faerie dust? For fuck’s sake, that’s moronic.
Also- you really think that Health insurance reform would not be worse if we hadn’t fought as much as we did? And do you think cap and trade, immigration or anything else was going to be voted on if, legislatively, the GOP had even MORE time to stall and bicker? Ludicrous. Just- ludicrous.
amk
@Dream On:
Yes, tell that to corporate democrats and I-only-vote-against-my-party-principle fuckstick saint russ.
WyldPirate
@JenJen:
First off, Odonnell’s question was patently idiotic.
Secondly, your Obama excuse-making center in your brain is overheating and the excuse making is learned helplessness.
Because it has not been done (which I’m not sure of, because I haven’t researched every single sort of tax ever imposed), does that mean that an attempt should not have been made? Is that what you are saying?
Let me put this another way:
1. What if Kennedy’s response to the threat of Soviet space domination upon hearing the proposal to go to the moon was– “we can’t do that it has never been done”.
2. What if Roosevelt, when faced with the threat of a possible nuclear device by the Germans had said–“we can’t possibly afford the infrastructure or acquire the scientific expertise to accomplish this task”?
Do you get the point? Reaching greatness or accomplishing seemingly impossible tasks requires aspiring to it/them more often than not. It requires facing the fucking risk of failure. Why? Because you certainly aren’t going to do it if you don’t make the attempt.
In this case, in the end, it wouldn’t have really mattered if they had tried and failed and made a big public show before the election. Why? Because it begins, in a very public way, to change the narrative. It would have began a serious attempt to combat the 30+ years of Republican lies and brainwashing on taxes and the effect of the lie of perpetually lowering them. This is important, because the last time a major tax hike occurred was 17 years ago by Clinton. The result was the economy prospered (not all due to the tax hike admittedly).
Democrats can’t sit on their ass and continue to allow the economic gulf to widen–especially on borrowed money. It is destroying the country. Obama might have tried and failed. You know what you do then? You get up off the ground and get back on the horse and try to ride the thing again. You don’t sit there and whine and say it can’t be done. You don’t sit there and say it’s too hard or I’m scared of failing.
Bottom line is that if the Dems say “it has never been done” and they never try and trot out excuse after excuse, guess what the result will be? failure and the Dems will continue to get ro9lled and the bulk of the American people will continue to get screwed.
The “it can’t be done” attitude is killing the Democratic Party and it is killing America.
ETA: And tell me this. If Obama thinks it can’t be done, then why in the hell did President Pragmatist propose it during his first campaign and today, propose to fight for it again in ’12? If he thinks it can be done he is going to try. It’s either that or he is blowing smoke up our asses and he plans to say :it can’t be done and blow it off again and damage the country further.
But I’m sure you will be fine with excusing that cowardice as well.
chaseyourtail
@Mike M:
Um, that’s called fighting.
THE
@Seebach:
Rudd eventually lost the support of the Labor party as PM and was replaced by Gillard.
He is now Foreign Minister, which IMHO is a good role in our part of the world, for a former diplomat who is truly fluent in Mandarin.
chaseyourtail
@cat48:
Me three. He’s been the only one with the balls to call out the hypocritical left. LO is the man.
El Tiburon
Such a very tired and useless post. So gong on 30 years we have seen this country be run by right-wing ideology. It culminated in eight disastrous years of The Worse Prez Ever.
So all of us DFHipsters and liberals and progressives and blacks and Mexicans and gays and lesbians and independents and mod-republicans and rational Americans got together and produced large majorities and the first black president with name Hussein and we now have the gall and audacity for Hope We Can All Believe In?
Well excuse the fuck out all of us.
All of you spineless jellyfish can take a long walk-on a short plank. There is a reason many of the PL and politicians and rank- and – file are severly pissed. We are at the end of our rope. The line in the sandbox has been crossed. Yes, someone pissed in our cereal.
So, we are going to use our rights ( while we still have them) to Fucking Protest Out Loud and try AGAIN to get our country back.
The rest of you can continue to get the slippers and newspaper for your Republican masters, you goddamn lapdogs.
El Tiburon
@WyldPirate:
Yes an d yes and hell yes and give me some more of that.
Or shorter Wyld Pirate: whatever you do Mario Andretti, don’t drive too fast and try and win that race, because you might crash and lose.
WyldPirate
@the farmer:
What the fuck does the AUMF–conducted by Bush and another Congress–and based on lies– have to do with the tax hike bill that was recently considered you dumb hayseed? What does something in the fall of 2002 have to do with an entirely different bill in 2010 and how are the related to Obama? Other than the fact that Hillary is a tad bloodthirsty, was looking not to get smeared as a pacificst because she had presidential ambitions.
On top of that, the issue of war is a bit more serious than fucking tax cuts–though the economic mpact of each can be catastrophic.
At this point given the fiscal state of the US–an attempted failure would be a fucking victory for President Obama on the issue of tax policy. Instead, he just folded without a fight and he signaled his bargaining position weeks ago. His bargaining from that standpoint alone was an amateurish clown show, He got rolled by the Rethugs and it isn’t a sure bet that he won’t get rolled by his own caaucus in the House and get jack shit.
JWL
Dennis G: Is it possible for a democrat to take serious issue with Obama and yet not be a member of “the professional left”?
Whatever that is, I mean.
By the way, what is it exactly? I mean, what persons constitute its leadership? You seem to possess a keen grasp of who’s who among its membership. I double-dog dare you to post a list of its elite by name. And its rank and file? Surely more than a few specific names must spring to mind.
Truth be told, I don’t think you can. Because I think it’s a figment of your imagination.
JenJen
@WyldPirate: Coupla things.
First, your own method of argumentation and debate is a huge turn-off to many. I realize you’re utterly convinced of your own righteousness, but that doesn’t mean that your approach is in any way effective. I didn’t insult you with my query, but you managed to spit out only a sentence or two before insulting me. It doesn’t work, Pirate.
Was it? Why? I’m sincerely interested.
Uh, no. I was just looking for an example of where your approach actually yielded results. Was I not clear enough for you? I mean, I asked the question twice. Still waiting for you to demonstrate in any kind of tangible way how a Democratic President has managed to get Republicans to denounce tax cuts, though.
What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub? I specifically asked for an apples-to-apples comparison: Democratic President manages to secure Republican votes which raise taxes. Everything that follows in your response is a non-sequitur.
If you can’t (or are unwilling to) name an in-practice, historical example of how your method (which, I surmise, involves bullying and pummeling of some sort) has yielded tangible results, then just admit that you’re not up to the task. For a guy who revels in calling the President a coward, and thinks that talking tough and acknowledging your own personal failures in order to rectify damage is the answer here, why can’t you manage to pull this off yourself? On an internet message board, no less? This ain’t the Oval Office.
Of course I get the point. But why can’t you answer my question? Why did you just spend many paragraphs completely avoiding a rather straightforward query?
For my money, I think you’ve just effectively, if unintentionally, demonstrated Dennis’ OP point.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m an Obot and a loyalist and whatever else you’ve decided I am, sans any attempt at nuance, so that negates my entire position. I’m totally cool with whichever way you wish to characterize me in order to avoid an authentic conversation. But none of that is going to change the fact, for any cogent individual reading this, that you still won’t answer the question I asked.
El Tiburon
@JenJen:
Please do inform us on how this is an apple to Kennedy’s response to the Soviets? It makes zero sense. Maybe if Kennedy had the Death Star…
Rachel Maddow had a good segment tonight. She reminded us that Boehner, a few months ago, said that “of course he would vote for the middle class tax cuts only”
She presented a good case that it could have gone through, but the repubs now know obama will not fight.
Otherwise demanding an answer to your question as that will justify your conclusion is ridiculous.
SomYOU answer the question: should Kennedy have not promised to put us on the moon simply because it had never been done before? Because that is your insinuation with your question about repubs NEVER voting for tax hikes.
WyldPirate
@JenJen:
O. P.L. 90-248, Social Security Amendments of 1967 (H.R. 12080)
H.R. 12080, the Social Security Amendments of 1967, was signed by President Johnson on
January 2, 1968. The amendments provided a 13% across-the-board increase in benefits; raised
the taxable wage base from $6,600 to $7,800; increased the payroll tax rate from 4.4% on
employers and employees to 4.8% in 1969; raised the minimum benefit from $44 to $55 per
month; raised the earnings test limit to $1,680 a year instead of $1,500 (recipient lost $1 for every
$2 earned between $1,680 and $2,880, and lost dollar-for-dollar for earnings above $2,880);
added benefits for disabled widows and widowers at age 50, with a stricter definition of
disability; liberalized the definition of blindness for disability payments; and clarified the
definition of disability.
President Johnson had called for a 15% across-the-board increase in OASDI benefits and
numerous other changes in the Social Security Act. The proposals were embodied in H.R. 5710,
introduced in the House on February 20, 1967, by the Committee on Ways and Means Chairman,
Wilbur Mills (D-AR).
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: Wow Dawg, do you stay up all night?
JenJen
@WyldPirate: Edit window closed, but just to hit a few more points of yours:
You keep coming back to this. Seems as though your position remains that the Dems just never even tried. What do you call that vote last week in the Senate on preserving the middle-class tax cuts? Because it failed (with 53 votes!), does that somehow equal “they never even tried” in your book?
As far as the American people getting screwed, Ezra Klein has pointed out both in his column and on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show that, in Obama’s “deal”, more money is being spent on stimulative tax relief for the middle and working classes than is being spent on relief for the wealthiest. Do you disagree with his analysis? If so, why, and how?
Is that what you got out of yesterday’s presser? That President Obama was giving up, throwing in the towel, and refusing to exercise your horsey metaphor? Maybe watch it again. Maybe watch it again one more time after that, even.
I’m guessing that we’re talking past each other here because our realities and perceptions are not at all in sync. That might be the real impasse.
But I’ll implore you one more time, if you can, to answer the question: Are they any examples you can think of where a Democratic President convinced Republicans to vote against tax cuts? And if not, why would it work this time?
I sincerely want to know more about why it’s so, you know, different, foolproof, and, dare I say, infallible to try your approach this time.
ETA: I see you’ve managed to Wiki up an answer to my original query. Thank you for that, and also for extending me a little time given the late (early?) hour. More tomorrow. I promise. :-)
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: He also was dragged kicking and screaming to sign a fucking GI bill that paid me the same amount in 69 as my old man got in 45!
WyldPirate
@JenJen:
You lacked patience.
Your question was answered. Odonnell was wrong as were you. Rethugs have voted for tax hikes under Dems. It isn’t iimpossible.
And even if it were impossible now–at this point in history–does not mean it is not worth trying.
Jman
From MattY, professional left
This is my big concern. Obama said when asked that he didn’t think anyone would throw away the good faith and credit of the USA. Sure, you bet. The republicans are entirely willing to throw away the unemployed, fiscal stimulus, tax revenue in favor of public debt, health insurance reform, blah, blah, blah. Obama is leading the way into the mother of all traps and there is nothing we can do about it except hold on and watch while it happens. Simpson-Bowles, how dare anyone object.
Cheers
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
That old skin flint should have had to hump the bush for 1 month–bad heart and all–for doing that. Instead, he was too busy enriching the Texas based owners of Bell Helicopters giving them good contracts to make those Huey death moths ferrying cannon fodder around in that goddamne folly of a war.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: He got the silver star for being on a plane that turned around before it got in the shit. . .not another member of the crew got so much as the green weenie. Do I sound bitter? Hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today?
JenJen
@El Tiburon: Rachel’s show was terrific tonight. Always is. MSNBC was kind of all over the place tonight, and I actually learned a great deal from the varying opinions.
My “Spartacus” comment (it’s an old SNL tagline-joke, btw, I was totally cribbing) was related to what I believe was an inept comparison Pirate drew to Bush’s march to war and Obama’s current situation. Might want to scroll up a little, or follow the thread-within-the-thread?
I’ve never once suggested that the impossible, the never-before-reached, can’t ever be done and therefore should never be attempted. But seriously now, Kennedy’s moonshot to Republicans caving on tax cuts? Come the fuck on. THIS Republican Congress is going to be shamed, as a Christmas miracle perhaps, into voting for tax increases? I mean, the one time in the history of our republic, now is the golden moment when worlds collide, dogs fall in love with cats, and the GOP suddenly sees the light on how much tax cuts for the rich suck?
Indulge me in taking a moment to diagram that out…
1. Republicans have enough votes to block UI and extension of Bush-Era tax cuts for middle-class only.
2. Obama pounds his fist, barnstorms states, takes case to the American people, fights really, really, really hard
3. Republicans still have enough votes to block UI and extension of Bush-Era tax cuts for middle-class only.
4. Clock runs out. Bush-Era tax cuts to expire.
5. ???
6. Rich people don’t get tax cuts
Really?
@WyldPirate: I’m patient as all hell. I waited around for-eh-vuh for you to just answer a simple question. Almost fell asleep waiting, actually. Fail on first attempt, googled second attempt, jury still out. I’m worn out for today, but I assure you, this discussion isn’t over, and I’ll answer you when I have a little more time. Don’t forget to check back.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
I’m hardcore man. Too much bullshit flying that needed smacking down. It was like a shooting a few rounds of skeet, except the cowpies that were getting tossed were big and very easy to hit.
stuckinred
@El Tiburon: Goddamn, you’re up too!
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: Salute! I gotta get these critters out for their 2 mile mornin hump in 20 degree weather!
JWL
I should have perused this thread before posing my question, i.e., “..what is [the professional left] exactly? I mean, what persons constitute its leadership? You seem to possess a keen grasp of who’s who among its membership”.
You earlier posted: “[A person is a member of] the professional left [if they] happen to make [a] living off of selling….. opinions, policy ideas and political strategies and tactics”. .
I still challenge you to name names. To name all the names that occur to you.
If you cannot, you’re just blowing smoke.
JenJen
@WyldPirate: You didn’t hit shit.
And, I’m hardcore, too. But I have a job to get to. Imma research that LBJ pull of yours,too, and hardcore, but after work, and other sundry priorities, lest you think you got one over.
WyldPirate
@JenJen:
Last post and I’m turning in.
First, I’m am not utterly convinced of my own rightness, I will readily own up to an error. I have on this forum several times. ask FlipYrWhiG for one.
It is also late and the tireder I get the worst my patience gets.
Second, this post by dengre was the most odious piles of chickenshit revisionist history I’ve seen. It was better than ABLs lunatic nonsense from recent days, though simply because it was coherent and not unhinged–just reeking of fabrications and false assertions and strawmen. Third, I’m sick as snot and not in a good mood. I can’t breathe because of sinusitis. Fourth, I do not tolerate dumbassery well. It was thick in this thread. Finally, I’m trying to reform. I really am. It is more fun being nice here, but I’ve been used to using internet forums to take out my frustrations as a means of stress relief. Its a hard habit to break.
I’m a work in progress on this area of courtesy. I apologize for my harshness, but I backslid tonight. I’ll try to refrain from doing this to you because you seem that you are the type of person that will reciprocate in kind.
My apologies, jenjen.
Bill E Pilgrim
Oh for god’s sake. People are speaking out because they feel strongly about something. They’re giving their opinion. If you’ve got one about the subject, give it also, but to respond to people voicing a strong opinion with the equivilant of “Oh, so I suppose you just know everything, huh?” is just ridiculously puerile.
So does Barack Obama strenuously, even angrily, expressing his opinion about these people and their positions mean that he’s claiming “infallibility?” Even the progressives you’re trying to ridicule aren’t accusing him of that.
I don’t know who this is posting here, but this is just embarrassing, John.
A Humble Lurker
The problem is, in order to bitch, you should know but you don’t have to. What bothers me is sometimes I hear people bitching angrily and strenuously about things they don’t. People in an earlier thread calling for ‘reconciliation!’ for the tax cuts before a few others had to point out to them that that can only be used once a year. Micheal Moore on Huffpo crying for the Dems to ‘Make the Republicans stand up and read from the phone book!’ Rachel Maddow after Obama’s Oval Office oil spill speech holding the speech she wished he’d given, saying she’d do; things the president would have no power to do (she too mentioned using reconciliation).
THAT’S what bothers me about the caterwauling I sometimes hear from the left. It’s as uninformed and emotional as the right’s ‘KEEP GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE!!’. Well, okay not that bad, but in that neighborhood. And that’s what makes the ‘you should do what I think’ attitude infuriating, frustrating, and ultimately useless.
But hey, that’s me.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@WyldPirate:
Oh noes! Someone is wrong on teh intert00bs! WyldPieRat to teh rescoo!
Thanks for the laugh. You weren’t serious, were you?
Wilson Heath
Holy frak. Can’t keep up with the comments anymore. “We are too many.”
Nick
@Adam:
um, he did
El Tiburon
@stuckinred:
Holla!
Marc McKenzie
@Rathskeller:
“It’s stupid. People somehow think we elect kings. Reagan didn’t get everything he wanted. Fucking George W. Bush didn’t get everything he wanted, and he had the most favorable set up of any president in a hundred years. Be realistic.”
Ah, but that’s rub, isn’t it? They are not being realistic. They believe that all Obama had to do was snap his fingers, or do a dance, or yell, scream, and hurl four-letter words at Boehner’s orange face and KAPOW!! All problems solved.
‘Cept things don’t work that way, and this guy isn’t King Obama.
And instead of actually going after the Republicans who helped to put this country into the shitter, they go after…well, other Democrats and people in the Administration. Talk about the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Or, at best, they fall back on the “They’re all the same!!” line. Yep…except that Bush’s behavior shot that meme in the head and buried it in 2001.
The irony of this whole thing is that some of the “Professional Left” want Obama to ignore Congress and rule by fiat and just do whatever the hell he wants…and that’s exactly what they criticized GWB for doing.
And no one is above criticism–not Obama, and not the Professional Left.
I know who I’m taking aim at–and it ain’t this President. It’s the Republicans and their mindset that has, to be brutally frank, screwed this country nine ways till Sunday, and without any lube to boot.
Lisa
@Allan: Word!
Lisa
@MaximusNYC: You win the “illiteracy award” for the day.
Lisa
When did BJ commenters get so cuntish? Seriously, this used to be a lively place to throw ideas around. People argued and had hilarious name-calling fests, but there was always substance and there really were some amazing conversations. The comment threads used to be way better than the actual blog posts.
Now this place is a low-rent Daily Kos.
It really is tragic.
ET
Didn’t Bismarck say politics is the art of the possible?
Seriously the only difference between the professional left and the GOP as a whole is dogma. Other than that they are looking for purity in politics – two things that have never happened in a free country.
Dennis G.
@BR:
The loss of Teddy is almost impossible to calculate. Had he been with us I think most of the stupid could have been swept away. I still miss him and nobody has stepped up to fill his shoes in the Senate. It is a real void.
JMS
Here’s what irritates me about X faction of the Democratic party. They are just powerful enough to tear down the other parts of the party and make it impossible for the other parts to do their job or win elections, but not powerful enough to win the day with their own positions.
Well, when Republicans lose elections, perhaps they complain about their factions the same way. I have no idea.
Cole’s point about everyone being angry with Clinton makes a good point. The presidency and the current political situation is structured such that if Hamsher herself suddenly became president, she could never carry out the things she claims she wants.
I think it’s a general trait of our society these days, though, that effect of our have gotten so many more things is that instead of being satisfied, we are ever more demanding of the things we don’t have. Getting so many amazing things (in technology, in standard of living, in progressive policy, yes I said it) makes us disdainful of the things we got and just more angry that we didn’t get the things we didn’t get. I sometimes think that’s why FDR and JFK look good in retrospect–people didn’t have very high expectations in those days–you were just lucky not to die of a whole host of diseases that are considered trivial, and because the medical technology to alleviate them didn’t exist, you’d die of them whether you were poor or rich. Expectations are too high (not just in politics–look at just about any other area of interest) because we’ve already achieved so much.
David Marotta
Thank you!! I’ve had it with Dkos, FDL and the rest of the whiny ideologues. The most important thing is making sure the Rethugs don’t take the White House in 2012. The far left seems to care more about getting their way on everything than keeping the wingnuts from running the country…
JAHILL10
@frosty: Hoffman sold out too. Or did you miss the Hoffman/Rubin show that was making the college circuit in the late 80s. Pathetic.
lushboi
WHERE’S MY FUCKING PONY GOD DAMMIT! I WAS PROMISED A MUTHERFUCKING HOPE PONY AND I WANT IT NOW NOW NOW!
ChrisWWW
@JMS:
That has no bearing on this argument about the tax cuts.
Opposition to the Bush tax cuts for the rich has been a part of the Democratic platform since ~2003. Both John Kerry and Obama campaigned against them. The public is decidedly against them according to the polls. Opposition to the cuts is not some fringe position held by the “X faction.”
Dennis G.
I’m glad that this fueled a lot of back and forth. A sick child called me away and I’m just now getting back way too late. So it goes.
The defense that any criticism of the people who claim to speak for the left is a criticism of all the left and all progressive policy goals is just bullshit and that is what inspired this post.
You may think that there is zero difference between your average American with progressive values and somebody who gets paid to play one on the teevee, online, radio, print and over the twitter. I think there are big differences and that these people speak for themselves and not for me or any other progressive. These self-appointed spokespeople are the ones I call the “professional left”.
When they make mistakes–which they do all the time–it should not be seen as an attack on all liberals/progressives to call them out. And yet that it the way they spin it and the meme that their followers run with.
These self anointed mavens of the left have been spectacularly wrong over the years and yet they can never be criticized. I think that the strategy and tactics used to push the PO as the only thing that mattered in the HCR fight was a major mistake. But one cannot even mention that that choice might have been wrong without unleashing charges you’re hippie punching and attacking all progressives and all progressive goals. I am not surprised to read this level of critique in response to what I wrote. It is a type of criticism that I can take take as serious or even well thought out.
I own my words and re-reading my post I can see some prose here and there that could have been clearer. I make mistakes and my opinions evolve as new information comes in. I do not mind admitting when I am wrong and trying to be accountable for my errors. If I think I am wrong about what I said, I will say so. And as always there are a lot of smart comments that give me pause and help me sharpen my thoughts as they evolve.
My gripe is that most of those who make up the “professional left” never admit error and never cop to any involvement in policy failures. It would be nice if more of them followed the example of Rachel Maddow–who readily admits errors, gives credit where credit is due and makes harsh critiques of the Administration in a way that I can support and appreciate. You never get the sense with her that the goal is Rachel Inc., her ego or the size of her paycheck. I can’t say that about most of the others I would categorize as the “Professional Left”. I know that some have a problem with the term, but it is an accurate description of the group of folks in this small self-important club. If somebody has a better term, them I’m all ears.
Cheers
Rathskeller
@Lisa: All internet forums have the possibility of being spoiled by trolls or people with limitless amounts of time to repeat the same ideas over and over again. WyldPirate is currently playing that role in any thread that involves Obama. A solid 10% of the posts so far in this thread have been from him – 27 out of 293 comments, although in fairness, he’s been unusually forthcoming with details and cites. It’s not the endless bitter insults that he usually provides.
It’s a problem all anonymous forums have. The only answer is to contribute yourself (something I don’t do enough), try to be polite, try not to get distracted. Cleek has a terrific comment filter for unrelenting trolls, so whenever B.O.B. writes here, I just see funny comments about pie. Just google “cleek pie” when you need that link again.
beergoggles
@David Marotta: And yet the hippie punching continues.
The hippies get blamed for voting for Nader, and yet there’s nothing done to court them. I say good for em if they’ve gotten over the beaten wife syndrome that the rest of the Dems seem affected with.
El Tiburon
@JenJen:
So then do you agree with her main thesis: Obama should not have given it all away? He is quickly on his way to becoming irrelevant.
Rathskeller
@WyldPirate: Thanks much for outlining these goals. If nothing else, it makes your thoughts a lot clearer. And you sound sane when you’re writing more than non-stop insults (but less sane when you post continuously for hours on end).
You list a number of things above that Obama could have done, but I find them unpersuasive. I am asserting that Obama could have done everything you said, and lost. He would have looked manly and aggressive, and he’d be fighting for the left, but ultimately, he would have lost. That’s the key thing, the key risk that this deal avoids. In January, among other things, the lowest earners would have their tax level go from 10% to 15%, overnight. Not great for an economy, obviously, and from a political point of view, it is the worst outcome possible. The GOP wouldn’t be blamed, Obama would be. That’s the likely outcome, not your unrealistic view that Obama gets all aggro and then somehow always wins. That’s how history looks in retrospect, but it’s not how politics feels like at the moment.
LBJ and JFK were able to fight for some things very effectively, but LBJ ultimately lost as many battles as he won, and he left the office a broken man. He was also able to get many progressive initiatives passed in the shocked period after JFK’s assassination, surely the most unique of opportunities.
The key point, though, is that the current period is genuinely different from the historical examples you cite. The filibuster is being used in a way that is unique and it blocks everything. The Rockefeller Republicans that LBJ was able to negotiate with just don’t exist anymore. We just went through an election where every Congressmember could see how some of their colleagues had been effectively primaried by right-wing lunatics and incompetents. Those maniacs successfully primaried fucking Bob Bennett and now they’re threatening goddamn Orrin Hatch! When literal cooperation with the president is a threat, they’re not going to do it for a tax increase.
That’s the reality. Obama got a shitty deal, but it gets the votes, it provides a stimulus, and it avoids the worst outcomes. It’s acceptable.
Lynda
@Yutsano:
Hmm. This comment should go somewhere else. Oh well.
Yes, we need to educate those trickle-minded believers!
Better you than me. Reagan and followers have thoroughly brain fogged the lot.
Lynda
@A Humble Lurker:
Lurk some more!! We need you.
WyldPirate
@Rathskeller:
First, you’re welcome for the reply. I’m perfectly sane but damned frustrated. I am frustrated at both the seeming incompetence of Dems from the top down, the attitude that Obama is above criticism here but most of all I have a white hot fury for the Rethugs that is turning on the Democrats because they are acting like a bunch of abused spouses–Obama included.
Second, I think that is an unfair criticism that I post here hours on end. Many people do if you read the threads. What skin is it off your teeth of I do that? I am unemployed. I am losing my COBRA subsidy next month. I have serious medical issues. Between posts and reading here, I prepare and send out resumes and fill out applications for jobs. I do this endlessly. This-this posting on the board is my entertainment along with taking care of my health via spending 1.5 hours in the gym per day. I simply fail to see why it should concern you how much I post. There are many other people here that post very frequently.
Sure he could have done that. And sure he could have lost. But he would have at least tried. There was tons of mismanagement by the Dems from Obama on down as to their planning and execution.
The crux of the issue for me is the learned helplessness on the part of many Dems–Obama included. They never make a stand. Never. They had 4 years to prepare in the House and two under Obama. Obama ceded the issue and he didn’t push his own caucus or make a forceful enough stand in a timely manner. That is unacceptable bungling.
My gripe is basically not too far off from yours. Yes I acknowledge the Rethugs are behavining recklessly and criminally. Yes, Obama has a crappy deal. Yes, the Senate rules are fucked up. But sometimes you have to make a stand. You have to change something that you are doing to change the narrative, even if you lose and we are losing badly now.
Doing the same thing over and over is insanity. That is what the Dems are doing. Something has to change to alter the message.
Gus
@Bob Loblaw: What he said.
Lisa
Most working class people are alright with what the dems are doing. But I guess they are just stupid and don’t spend enough time posting on the internets – because then they would KNOW THE TRUTH.
Marmot
Wow. All them paragraphs and not a single, solitary pronoun describing this nefarious Professional Left. Who are they? Who knows?
Dennis, I like your stuff. Really. But this is laziness or cowardice, as I would tell anyone trying to pull this trick. And no, I don’t want to primary Obama.
Robert Waldmann
What NobodySpecial said.
I have been insulting professional leftists all week, but this post just isn’t reality based.
The HCR delay occured while Baucus was trying to compromise with Grassley. The public option fight didn’t delay the bill significantly. The Democrats caved to Lieberman instantly.
The professional left just isn’t strong enough to cause trouble even if we are objectively pro-Republican left deviationists.
Gus
@Marmot: Yeah, it’s a little reminiscent of Bush’s “some say…” technique
agrippa
As written above, there is not very much difference between teabaggers and firebaggers. Both are zealous hotheads who are the prisoners of their passions.
When “betrayed” they will turn on you. As surely as night follows day.
Obama is a practical and intelligent man who is trying to do what is possible. He is neither a ‘corporate sellout’ nor a ‘socialist’.
There is nothing unusal about a President being hated; it comes with territory. The hatred describes the one who hates.
Syz
This post is an excellent example of the idiocy of The Professional Center. Even though they are the minority of voters, they believe that because of their location on the political spectrum, they are magically superior to “the extreme left and right”; as if being at the bottom of the Atlantic is better than being in London or New York.
Lisa
@Rathskeller: Thank you, you are awesome.
Lisa
@agrippa: Yes, this.
Lisa
@Syz: Nah, extremes are never the majority. Hardly anyone identifies with hard left or right.
If this were not the case, Kucinich and/or Tancredo would have been elected ages ago.
JWL
@Dennis G.:
Gee, Dennis, if you’re not prepared to name the names of those you deem “professional left”, you’re blowing smoke.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The only fair conclusion being it’s a figment of your imagination.
Rathskeller
@WyldPirate: Hi, you’ll probably never read this, but here goes the unsolicited personal advice.
Stop reading this blog and posting non-stop. It’s not healthy or productive. In your words, you have serious medical problems, you’re about to lose all COBRA coverage, and you need a job. This place is a pleasurable distraction from your real problems, but you’re spending hours on it. The majority of your comments on this blog are not constructive or informative, although you’re certainly capable of it. As a objective measure to consider, notice how often people are responding with insults to you and about you, as opposed to your arguments. The owner of this site has called you nuts. You’ve lost perspective, and you are not currently acting in your best interest. Talk to a friend or social worker about what’s going , and again, stop posting here for a while.
And here goes the unsolicited rejoinder to what you said. No, sorry, Angry Obama doesn’t work for me when he doesn’t get any results. I mean, yes, I honestly have fantasized about him using giant rants, using his policy knowledge to relentlessly ridicule GOP lightweights who are blocking him. I want some of these people named in a Two Minute Hate fest. I just don’t think it works, not in today’s environment, with rigid ideologues on the right and a substantial low-information voter base.
The Angry Obama you seem want, the one who emulates LBJ and bitchslaps people in his way, that guy still doesn’t get votes, and he doesn’t even get the compromise he just got. Instead, he just gets portrayed as a out-of-control black man, someone obviously over his head. I do want more from him than I’m getting, but this is ok.
Looking at the stories today, Obama apparently lost faith in the Dem leadership and started negotiating directly with McConnell. McConnell is an idiot, and so he gave away substantially more stimulus than he would have had he understood what was happening.
Syz
@Lisa: If you take people who affirmatively identify as Republican or Democrat, they outnumber the “independents” (who don’t really exist anyway.) The idea that there is a constituency “in the center” is a queer fantasy of DC elites with no basis in political science.
Also, there is no such thing as “the hard left.” (As you said, guys like Denis Kucinich have no significant following.)
The “hard left” is a straw man that Dennis G. invented to flex his moral superiority.
Or as Atrios puts it: